Allison (A Kane Novel)

by Steve Gannon

  The young officer checked Kane’s credentials, made an entry in his notebook, and waved him past. As Kane drove in, he noticed a heavy chain and a number of interlinked padlocks dangling from the gate.

  The dirt fire road swung right, then steepened as it continued up the slope. Kane’s late-model Ford, one of several “city cars” assigned to the West L.A. homicide unit, began to strain, its wheels slipping on loose gravel. After several hair-raising curves, Kane surmounted a steep rise. There, the road forked. To the right it proceeded higher into the mountains. To the left, several hundred yards down a steep incline, lay the blue surface of Encino reservoir, enclosed within a second chain-link fence. Unlike the outer perimeter fence ringing several square miles of mountain hillside, the inner fence ran a mere twenty yards from the water’s edge. Within this secondary barrier Kane spotted three more patrol cars, two unmarked vehicles, and a gray van with a Department of Water and Power logo on the side.

  Pumping the brakes, Kane eased his Ford down toward the reservoir. Finally reaching more level ground, he entered an open gate in the inner fence, arriving at a flat section of shoreline. There, beyond the parked cars and a loose knot of men, he saw the nude body of a young girl sprawled at the water’s edge.

  Kane turned off the engine and stepped from his vehicle. One of the men in the group saw him and started over. As the man neared, Kane recognized the round face and bulldog bearing of Carl Peyron. The ranking detective for the West L.A. Major Assault Crimes unit, Peyron had drawn the Jordan French abduction case weeks before. Kane knew that for lack of evidence, Peyron had made little progress to date on the investigation. Kane also knew that situation was about to change.

  “Morning, Kane,” Peyron wheezed when he arrived. “Make that afternoon,” he corrected, squinting at the sun.

  “How’s it going, Carl?” Kane replied, noting beads of perspiration glistening on Peyron’s forehead, a faint trace of Maalox ringing his lips. “A bit far from home, aren’t you?”

  Peyron, a stocky Hispanic in his late thirties, mopped his brow with a crumpled handkerchief. “Yeah. Now I recall why I transferred out of the valley.”

  Kane smiled. “Me, too.” Then, his smile fading, “Is it her?”

  Peyron nodded somberly. “It’s her. The body’s been in the water for some time, but you can still tell it’s Jordan French.” Peyron glanced toward the men assembled a dozen yards from the body. “The Van Nuys guys who first responded recognized her and contacted us, because they knew we were handling the abduction. Needless to say, they’re more than happy to let West L.A. take over, especially now that it’s turned into a homicide. Unless the parents want to involve the Feds, it’s all yours.”

  Kane knew that although LAPD detectives had jurisdiction over the investigation of Jordan’s abduction and murder, the FBI could be brought in by request to assist in the kidnap portion of the case. It was an option that neither Jordan’s parents nor LAPD authorities had pursued to date, and that’s the way Kane wanted it to stay, having had problems in the past with what he considered unnecessary FBI interference.

  Kane turned toward the shoreline. “Who found her?”

  “DWP workers who were surveying for some water-quality improvement project. Seems they’re upgrading all open reservoirs in the system.”

  “Make sure those guys stick around. I want to talk to them.” Kane thought a moment. “Where was she found? On the bank?”

  “Floating a few yards offshore. One of the survey guys dragged her in.”

  “Anybody else touch her?”

  “According to the first officers to arrive, no.”

  “The DWP crew had to unlock that gate at the street to get in,” reasoned Kane. “Did they report any signs of tampering?”

  “Nope. They said everything looked normal.”

  “How about the other gate?” asked Kane, indicating the one in the inner fence near the water.

  “That was open. The DWP guys say it hasn’t been locked all summer.”

  “I noticed a string of padlocks on the outside gate. Who has locks on that gate?”

  “That’s the first thing I asked when I got here,” said Peyron. “DWP, Southern California Edison, the Fire Department, and LAPD all have locks on the chain. Nobody else.”

  “The dirt road I drove in on appeared to keep on going up the ridge,” Kane said, glancing toward the top of the hill behind them. “Where’s it wind up?”

  “It connects with an unimproved section of Mulholland,” answered Peyron. “One of the uniforms hiked up there. He says there’s another gate at the top. Nothing looked disturbed. The chain and locks there are all intact, and no cuts in the fence.”

  “We’ll want to recheck that, along with everyone who has keys.” Kane swept his eyes over the miles of brush-covered hillside encircling the reservoir, noting a number of animal trails cutting through the undergrowth. “For that matter, it’s possible our man entered from one of the nearby neighborhoods. It would have been a long hike carrying a body, but it’s possible. We’ll have to canvass the neighbors, too.”

  “Right. Inquire about any strange cars in the area, check for cuts in the fencing, that kind of thing,” Peyron agreed. “I called the Van Nuys watch commander and asked him to send more guys out here for some door-knocking. I also took the liberty of contacting SID,” he added, referring to the LAPD Special Investigative Division crime-scene unit. “I notified the coroner’s office, too. They’re on their way.”

  “Good. Anything else?”

  Peyron hesitated, then referred to his notebook. “One thing. Maybe it’s not important, but I asked the DWP workers about currents in the reservoir.”

  “To get an idea of where the body was dumped?”

  “Yeah. It appears the corpse was weighted down before it broke loose. According to the DWP guys, there’s a subsurface current draining toward a collector at the north end of the dam. But once the body rose to the surface, the wind could have blown it in any direction.”

  Kane gazed out over the reservoir. “A lot of shoreline to search.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  Just then one of the patrol officers yelled to them from his cruiser. “Detectives, I got a call here from one of our guys out on the street. A news crew just arrived. They want to know whether there’s any statement yet.”

  “Not yet,” Kane yelled back. “And for God’s sake, don’t let them in.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Damn, how do those dirtbags find out so fast?” Kane muttered. Cursing under his breath, he started toward the reservoir. After a few steps, he turned. “Hey, Carl?”

  “What?”

  “I’ll want to get together with you later and go over everything you have on the abduction. Tomorrow morning work for you?”

  Peyron nodded, staring past Kane toward the water. “Sure. And if there’s anything else I can do to help …”

  “I’ll let you know. By the way, good work today. If you ever want to move over to homicide, we could use a guy like you.”

  Again, Peyron glanced uneasily toward the water. “I’ll pass.”

  Kane had investigated a wide range of murders over the course of his career, but those involving children were always the hardest, and he understood Peyron’s reluctance. Steeling himself for what was to come, Kane made his way to the water’s edge, passing a knot of somber officers. With a nod of approval, he noted that they had apparently stayed well back from the body. In all likelihood the reservoir was merely a dump site and not the place where the child’s death had occurred, but you never knew what evidence might turn up.

  Kane approached the corpse slowly, careful not to miss details that might later prove important. Looking like something a backhoe might have turned up, the bloated body of a female child lay in the sunlight a few feet from the waterline. Areas of scum-coated skin had sloughed from long immersion; a tangle of hair was matted around her neck and face. She rested on one side, an arm raised awkwardly above her head—presumably
as result of the survey worker’s hauling her ashore. Her position reminded Kane of a schoolchild raising a hand in class. Frayed nylon cord still trailed from her wrist.

  A breeze drifted up from the water, carrying the odor of putrefaction. Breathing shallowly to lessen the smell, Kane moved closer. From the state of decomposition and abdominal distention caused by gases of decay, he estimated that the corpse had been immersed for at least a week, although the ambient water temperature could affect that time period considerably. Typically a body floated facedown after surfacing, and a section of the child’s upper back that had been open to the air was cracked and darkened from exposure. Kane noticed tiny blow-fly larvae on areas of skin that had been above water, concluding from the maggots’ size that the corpse had been floating for no more than twenty-four to thirty-six hours.

  Deciding to check with DWP about water temperatures at different depths, Kane leaned over the body, still not touching it. Mottled purplish discolorations called postmortem lividity, a condition caused by blood settling under the effect of gravity, marked the grayish-white flesh of the child’s right side. Because lividity “fixes” and becomes unchangeable within the first eight hours of death, the port-wine stains on the child’s right thigh, hip, and shoulder indicated that after her death she had lain on her right side for an extended period of time. At some point after that she had been transported, weighted, and dumped into the reservoir, but the lividity still bore testament to the hours immediately following her death.

  Staring at the corpse, Kane felt a surge of anger, wondering how anyone could have done that to a child. Fighting to pinch off his emotions, he forced himself to focus on the details of the investigation, a technique he had long ago adopted to shield himself from the horrors of his profession. But as he resumed his inspection of the body, he made a silent vow, both to himself and to the dead girl at his feet.

  Continuing his examination, Kane noticed a faint lattice of marks on the visible portion of the girl’s lower back and buttocks. As he made a mental note to have the coroner investigate those injuries, Kane also noticed that several areas of sodden skin on the body’s ankles had degloved from the underlying tissue. Suspecting ligature wounds, he inspected the wrists, finding similar trauma. The body rose when it bloated, sawing loose from whatever was holding it down, he thought grimly, glancing at the tag of rope still remaining on one wrist. He made another mental note to save the knots and get divers to locate whatever was used to anchor her down.

  Carefully, Kane shifted to the other side of the corpse. Small aquatic animals had nibbled away much of the eyelids, lips, and portions of both eyes, but Kane could still recognize the face of Jordan French. Following her disappearance, her picture had been featured in every newspaper and plastered on every Amber Alert notice in town. Nevertheless, he decided to try for prints at autopsy to get a positive ID, and to have a sexual-assault team present, too.

  Leaning down, Kane noted a small gold ring on the index finger of the girl’s right hand. Because of postmortem bloating, the band had cut deeply into her tissue, its heart-shaped body and filigreed “F” inscription nearly hidden within the swollen flesh.

  A moment later Kane saw the SID crime-scene van inching down the steep hillside. Standing, he shoved his hands into his pockets. Though his exam of the body had just begun, he was already certain of two things. First, the killer had stored the body for some time before disposing of it. Second, rather than simply burying the corpse, the killer had gone to great lengths to submerge it in water, most probably to ensure that no external physical evidence—hair, fibers, latent fingerprints, tissue under the fingernails, and so forth—remained to tie him to his victim.

  Kane knew he would spend the next hours with the SID crime unit and the coroner’s investigator directing a detailed examination of the corpse and coordinating a ground search of the reservoir area. Everything would be done by the book. That notwithstanding, he expected to find nothing useful. And unless he were lucky, he knew that the autopsy would most likely prove useless too—which left canvassing the surrounding neighborhoods as the most promising avenue of investigation. Given the concern for eliminating evidence that the killer had shown in disposing of his victim, Kane suspected that approach would also prove futile.

  As the SID van reached the bottom of the incline, Kane returned his gaze to the dead youngster, a child whom someone had abducted, murdered, and dumped like a sack of garbage. Sickened by the sight, Kane’s thoughts turned inward, traveling back to the death of his oldest son in a rock-climbing accident several years past. Tommy’s death had been a paralyzing, crushing, heartbreaking loss that Kane had eventually learned to accept, but one that he had never been able to reconcile. Again, he wondered how anyone could treat a child with such malice.

  Though the odds were against him, Kane reaffirmed the vow he had made earlier, this time speaking aloud. “Whoever did this to you, kid,” he promised softly, “I’m going to find him.”

  *

  CBS bureau chief Lauren Van Owen looked up at me from her desk. “I’m happy to finally meet you, Allison.”

  Not trusting myself to speak, I glanced around the bureau chief’s office, struggling to control a rising tide of animosity. Flanking Lauren’s desk, a rack of TV monitors, each tuned to a different station, covered an entire wall. A large bulletin board took up another. Beside the door, a narrow couch blocked part of a window that looked out into the newsroom.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” the attractive blond seated behind the desk continued.

  “When I made the appointment, I didn’t know I would be seeing you,” I said, finally finding my voice.

  Lauren raised an eyebrow. “But once you found out, you bulled ahead anyway.”

  “Something like that.”

  “You’re like your father in that respect.” Lauren motioned with a hand toward the couch. “Please sit down.”

  At the mention of my father, I felt a renewed rush of hostility. “I didn’t come here to discuss my father.”

  “No. You came here to confront the hussy who almost came between your parents—and possibly give her a piece of your mind.”

  I squared my shoulders. “As a matter of fact, you’re right.”

  “Fair enough,” said Lauren, holding my eyes with hers. “I don’t blame you. I’m sure that like most young people, you see things only in black and white, with no confusing shades of gray. So if that’s what you want, fine. But first let me say that I’m not defending myself for what happened. Back then I was a hungry reporter, and your father was … getting into a lot of trouble at work. They were tough times for both of us, and what took place between us was a mistake. A big mistake. God knows we paid for it.”

  I hesitated, disarmed by Lauren’s candor. The words I’d planned to spit at the woman who had carried on a brief but deeply hurtful affair with my father suddenly seemed inappropriate. “I … I’m sorry for what you went through afterward,” I said instead, looking more closely at Lauren’s face. Though I tried, I was able to detect little of the brutal slashing she had suffered at the hands of the same man who had attacked my father.

  “The scars are still there, but you have to look hard to see them,” said Lauren, noticing my gaze. “A little makeup and years of reconstructive surgery can work wonders. I recovered most of my vision too, though I still have to wear sunglasses in bright light.”

  “So that’s why you, uh, switched to—”

  “—working behind the camera,” Lauren finished. “In a way, things turned out for the best. I’m happy in what I’m doing now, and I have more time for my daughter, Candice. She’s a few years younger than you.” The bureau chief hesitated, then folded her hands on the desk. “Allison, although we’ve just met, you and I have a lot of history between us. Bad history. I’m sorry for that.”

  I remained silent.

  “Your cameraman friend at Channel 2 told Brent that you’re a writer, and that you’re taking journalism courses in college,” Lauren cont
inued, chipping at the ice.

  “That’s right. At least I will be,” I admitted. “I’ve been majoring in English at UCLA, but this fall I’m transferring to USC and switching to journalism. And I just met Mike last Friday. He’s not really a friend.”

  “Well, he spoke highly of you. By the way, congratulations on your rescue effort at the beach. That was a dynamite segment. Our ratings shot through the roof after we ran it.”

  “How nice for you.”

  “So why journalism?” Lauren asked, ignoring my sarcasm.

  “Well, I’ve been working on the UCLA school paper, and I like it,” I replied, thawing slightly. “Plus journalism might be a career at which I could actually make a living.”

  “As opposed to tackling something more risky? Creative writing, for instance?”

  I shrugged. “I suppose so.”

  “I don’t want to pop your bubble, Allison, but there are no guarantees in the news business either,” Lauren cautioned. “What’s more, when it comes to getting ahead, many of those working in the media consider a journalism degree almost worthless. They’ll tell you there’s a big difference between academia and the real world, and the only way to learn this job is to do it.”

  “And what do you think?”

  Lauren smiled. “I think it depends on the person. Schooling can’t replace ability or on-the-job experience, but if nothing else, getting a journalism degree shows desire.”

  I thought for a moment, finally deciding that despite my animosity toward Ms. Van Owen, working at CBS for the rest of the summer might be something I could use, and maybe even like. If I were going to be a journalist, even a print journalist, getting some on-the-job experience would be helpful. “So tell me about the intern position,” I said, beginning to get excited.

  “It’s thirty to forty hours a week with no pay. Mostly gofer work, but sometimes there’s a chance to get involved with the news.”

  “No pay?”

  “Money’s tight. No pay is standard for interns. Is that a problem?”