Hit and Run (Moreno & Hart Mysteries)

by Allison Brennan

  “Not even close.”

  R.J. calmly navigated the traffic as Krista stared out the window.

  “You never told me who we’re going to see.” She looked at him.

  “Doctor James Levine. He’s good. You’re going to want to add his name to your contacts so you can look him up next time you land a murder case.”

  One of the primary reasons defense attorneys hired PIs was to dig up eyewitnesses the police might have missed. Another reason was to find experts who could contradict testimony put on by the prosecution. It was the sort of PI work that most closely resembled actual police work, the sort of PI work Scarlet and Krista had been dreaming about in the three years since they’d founded Moreno & Hart. Unfortunately, they’d spent much of that time chasing down wayward husbands and insurance cheats.

  So why was R.J. suddenly helping her?

  Krista was suspicious. She didn’t trust him. R.J. was a lot of things—smart, charming, persistent. But he was also cut-throat competitive, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do for the sake of a job.

  Krista looked at him, so relaxed and confident behind the wheel.

  “Why are you helping me?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer, and she couldn’t read his eyes behind the shades.

  “Why are you suddenly throwing me business, brining me in, building up my network? I’m your competition, in case you forgot. Scarlet and I—you shouldn’t be so quick to write us off.”

  “I’m not writing you off.”

  “Then why all the help?”

  He smiled slightly. “I’ve got my reasons.”

  Her nerves fluttered, and she looked away.

  “So you still haven’t told me who this is,” she said. “What does James Levine do, exactly?”

  R.J. smiled. “He dissects people.”

  ~ ~ ~

  They made their way down a corridor filled with med students clad in scrubs and lab coats. R.J. halted beside a long glass window and peered into a laboratory.

  “I don’t see him.”

  Krista checked the placard by the door. “Two-twenty-two?”

  “Twenty-four.” R.J. walked to the next long window and stopped. “Here we go.” He signaled someone as Krista looked through the glass.

  Big mistake.

  Stainless steel tables filled the room and on each was a cadaver. Her gaze landed on a bloated corpse with the skin peeled back. A woman in surgical scrubs reached inside and lifted out an organ. She placed it on a scale and—

  “Whoa.” R.J. grabbed Krista’s elbow as she swayed backward. “You okay?”

  “Fine.” She shook him off and turned around.

  “You’re not going to hurl, are you?”

  “No. Where is this guy? I thought you had an appointment.”

  “Right there.”

  A man wearing in a lab coat stepped through a pair of double doors. He smiled at R.J. “You’re early. I’m just finishing up.” He cast a curious glance at Krista. “I see you brought a friend. You care to observe?”

  “We’re actually on a clock,” R.J. said. “You think—”

  “Give me one minute.” He held up a gloved finger. “You can wait in the conference room. Down the hall to the left.”

  Krista found it and took a chair with her back to the door.

  “You okay?” R.J. asked.

  “Fine.”

  Levine appeared a moment later wearing the same lab coat but sans face mask and bloody gloves. The doctor had thinning white hair, thick black eyebrows, and friendly brown eyes.

  “Gross Anatomy.” He closed the door behind him and dropped a clipboard on the table. “Or as the students call it, First Year Slice and Dice.”

  He dug a can of Sprite from his pocket and plunked it on the table in front of Krista.

  “So, you’re working for Magnum here, eh?” He smiled at R.J. and sank into a chair.

  R.J. introduced her, ignoring the Magnum comment, and Krista passed Levine a business card.

  “Your name rings a bell,” she told him. “Did you ever—”

  “—work for the L.A. County coroner’s office? Yes, I did. And you used to be a cop.”

  Krista drew back, startled.

  Levine smiled. “The Ladera Park murders, back in oh-five.”

  Krista remembered it, but she couldn’t believe he did. It had been her very first homicide call, but he would have been a veteran by that point.

  “I have a knack for faces.” He shrugged. “Comes in handy.”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know how, exactly, given the nature of his work.

  “So, I read your report.” Levine’s voice suddenly turned somber as he slid his clipboard toward him and pulled out a thick stack of papers. “Brittany Lowe Holland. Twenty-nine.” He glanced at R.J. “You’re working for the defense now.”

  His tone was slightly accusatory, and Krista decided she liked him.

  “Trial’s in three weeks,” R.J. said. “A key witness disappeared, and we’re having to re-work the case strategy. We’re taking a second pass at everything.”

  “Including time of death, I take it.”

  This guy didn’t miss much. Krista watched him flip through the pages, and she recognized the format of the Orange County coroner’s report.

  “Anything you can tell us?” R.J. asked.

  Levine’s brow furrowed as he flipped through the pages.

  “Thomas was thorough, as usual.” He glanced up. “I don’t have much to add—just a few things to point out, because I’m sure they’ll come up at trial—” More page-flipping. “Here we go. Cause of death.” He turned to some pages that included autopsy photos.

  Krista braced herself.

  “Blunt force trauma.”

  Krista frowned. “I thought—”

  “The icepick came later.” Levine glanced at her. “Of course, that’s what made the news, because it was more sensational. But she was already dead.” He flipped to a photo of the victim’s skull with the skin retracted. He tugged the photo from the stack and slid it across the table.

  “Here you see the depressed fracture of the left parietal bone, consistent with a heavy instrument, most likely a hammer.”

  “Which was never found,” R.J. said. “Neither was the icepick.”

  Levine took out another picture. “Now, in this picture you see the stab wounds to the torso. By studying the wound track, you can infer how the weapon—in this case, an icepick—entered and exited in a fairly straight line. This is consistent with the victim being flat on the floor and the attacker sitting on her, straddling her as the wounds are made, eight wounds in all.”

  “So, you’re saying the attacker killed her and then stabbed her,” Krista said. “Why?”

  “Now, that’s above my pay grade. A question for a criminal profiler.”

  Krista’s gaze drifted to the sleeve of Levine’s lab coat. There was a smear of blood on his cuff, which unnerved her for some reason. She popped open the Sprite and took a sip to settle her stomach.

  “Another point I should make is what the M.E. didn’t find,” Levine said.

  “Defensive wounds,” R.J. stated.

  “Precisely. No stab wounds to the arms or hands that would indicate an attempt at self-defense. No hair or skin found under the nails. Even the crime scene pictures—” He pulled one from his stack of papers. “No signs of struggle, such as overturned chairs or broken dishes, shoes kicked off.”

  For a moment Krista simply stared at the picture of Brittany Holland, dead and mutilated on the floor of her own kitchen.

  “What about time of death?” R.J. asked.

  “I’m just getting to that.” He glanced at Krista and tucked the photos back into the stack. “Based on the livor and rigor mortis, the temperature of the body, I’m going to say Thomas’s estimate is on target. If I were to shift it at all, I might say it could have been six to ten instead of five to nine, but that’s speculation based on notes about insect activity. I’m not an entomologist.”


  R.J. glanced at Krista, but she couldn’t read his look.

  “One final point.” Levine glanced at his watch. “The lethal blow to the head—the location of the wound and direction of the force are important. The prosecutor will definitely focus on this.”

  “Height of the killer?” Krista asked.

  He nodded. “I would estimate someone as tall or taller than the victim, who is five-eleven. And remember, the blow came from behind.”

  “She turned her back on her killer,” Krista said.

  “Exactly.”

  Chapter Five

  Traffic had dissipated by the time they left and R.J. cut down Santa Monica Boulevard to the coast. Krista looked out at the beach, where surfers were suiting up for some evening waves. For a while they didn’t talk, and Krista gazed out at the water, trying to get the gruesome photographs out of her head.

  “Levine seems to know what he’s doing.” She looked at R.J. “Personable, too. I bet he’s good on the stand.”

  “He is.”

  “His analysis, though—I think it makes things worse, not better.”

  R.J. didn’t say anything, and Krista couldn’t tell if he was disappointed. He was a difficult man to read.

  She looked at the ocean and tried to spot the Channel Islands, but it was hazy. She thought of her ill-fated marriage that had been even briefer than Brittany’s. Krista had been so in love—it still amazed her how quickly things had gone downhill. It was the cheating that killed it. Anything else, she would have stuck around and tried to work it out. But cheating was a deal-breaker. She still vividly remembered finding the texts on Adam’s phone. Her first reaction had been disbelief, then hurt, then humiliation. Finally she’d reached the blinding fury stage, and she could have strangled him with her bare hands. But that was fleeting. By the time she actually confronted him, she was pissed as hell, but she had a handle on it.

  The person who’d bludgeoned Brittany and stabbed her with an ice pick eight times while she lay limp on the floor didn’t have a handle on anything.

  What would drive someone into such a rage?

  Jealousy.

  Krista had seen it at more crime scenes than she could count.

  “Did Brittany have a boyfriend?” She looked at R.J.

  “We didn’t find one.”

  “But you looked?”

  “Absolutely. So did the cops. I’m sure she had guys asking her out all the time, but we didn’t find evidence of anyone in particular.” He looked at her. “Why?”

  “It just seems like such an emotional crime.” Her previous theories about possible corporate sabotage—all that seemed impossible now. “Whoever did this was in some kind of rage.”

  “You’re thinking Holland found out she had a boyfriend?”

  “Possibly,” she said, “but there’s still the problem of the non-existent alibi. Holland’s an ass, but he’s also smart and he’s a lawyer. I don’t see him committing a crime this way.”

  “Then what are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking maybe her boyfriend found out she had someone new.”

  He shook his head. “We went through her phone records, her texts, her credit cards. If she had a boyfriend, it was someone she interacted with face-to-face. But like I said, we didn’t find anything.”

  “No alternate suspects to throw under the bus, huh?”

  “None.”

  Krista knew the strategy. Juries didn’t like unsolved homicides. They’d be much more likely to acquit a defendant if the crime could be pinned on someone else, so defense attorneys were always on the lookout for scapegoats.

  Krista thought about Brittany and how beautiful she was and the white Avalanche rolling past her house on the day of her murder. Jilted lover, maybe? Someone who had tried to pick her up and been rejected?

  She glanced at R.J. It was time to tell him about the Avalanche. She’d been putting it off, partly to develop the lead more, but also because she didn’t fully trust him.

  “Want to get dinner?” He turned to look at her and the sunset reflected off his shades.

  “What, now?”

  “Yeah, I interrupted your lunch. And you put in a long day.”

  She glanced at the ocean. “I don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know? Are you hungry or not?”

  She shot him a look. It was more complicated than that, and they both knew it. They’d managed to keep this thing between them—whatever it was—safely in check. But they’d done that by focusing on work. If work spilled over into dinner, and dinner spilled over into hanging out late—

  “You’re afraid of me.” He smiled.

  “Get real.”

  “No, you are. I can tell.” His smile turned to a grin, and she looked away. “You’re afraid to be alone with me, Hart. Just to come out and admit it.”

  “It ever occur to you that I might have plans tonight?”

  “Yeah, but you don’t.”

  She shot him a glare.

  “Come on,” he said.

  Then his phone buzzed and he dug it out of his pocket. “Flynn.”

  Krista gazed back at the water, trying to get her temper under control. His ego was mind-boggling. And annoying. It was one of the many qualities that made him a pain in the ass to work with.

  “When?”

  The sharpness of his tone made her look over.

  “You sure?”

  His expression had gone from smug to grim in a matter of seconds.

  “All right, text me the address. And meet me at Pablo’s.” He hung up and Krista watched him, waiting for an explanation.

  “Who was that?”

  “Brian.”

  She just looked at him.

  “My cousin, Brian,” he said. “You met him the other night.”

  “Carrot Top is your cousin?”

  He cut across three lanes, prompting a chorus of honks. “He’s meeting us at Pablo’s.”

  “Who’s Pablo?”

  “The taco place. He’ll pick you up there and give you a ride to your car.” He glanced at her. “Sorry about our dinner plan.”

  “We didn’t have a dinner plan.”

  “That’s okay—we’ll do a rain check.”

  ~ ~ ~

  With R.J. safely out of the way, Krista was free to get back to her regularly scheduled programming. Which consisted of work, work, and more work, because R.J. was right and she didn’t have a social life.

  She started at White Lotus, where a giant Buddha statue dominated the entrance. The place smelled like sweat and incense. A water fountain filled with lotus flowers gurgled in the corner, and Krista remembered something from an Asian art class she’d taken in college, something about the lotus symbolizing purity, floating above the muddy waters of desire and... something. She couldn’t remember the rest.

  “Namaste.”

  She glanced around to see a young bald man seated behind a bamboo table. He had a slender build and the perfect posture of a ballet dancer.

  “Will you be joining one of our classes tonight?” he asked, although she figured he was just being polite. She wasn’t exactly dressed for yoga.

  “Hi.” Krista looked around. On the other side of a glass window, a crowd of people simultaneously arched backward like they were made of Play-Doh. “Wow.”

  “Ustrasana.” He smiled serenely. “It takes practice.”

  Krista stepped toward the desk, holding out her PI’s license. He glanced at it.

  “And how may I help you, Detective?”

  “I wonder if you remember a woman who used to come here.”

  “Brittany Holland. Of course I do.”

  Krista tucked her creds away. “So, I take it you’ve been interviewed before?”

  “At length.” His expression didn’t change, but his voice grew sad. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have much to offer. Brittany wasn’t here the night of her—” He looked flustered a moment. “Passing.”

  Passing. The word bore absolutely no resemblance to the
photos Krista had seen earlier.

  “What about the day before?”

  “She hadn’t been in at all that week.” He shook his head. “The last time I saw her was the previous Thursday, August fifteenth.”

  It seemed an odd detail to recall, but maybe investigators had made him look at a calendar.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. She lost her keys that night, and we stayed late while she waited for a ride.”

  Krista filed that away. “You recall who picked her up?”

  “Cheryl, one of her friends from class.” He tipped his head to the side. “Do you mind my asking—are you an investigator with the D.A.’s office or the defense side?”

  “The defense.”

  She’d expected the answer to make him clam up, but he seemed okay with it.

  “I’m sorry, would you like to sit down?” He nodded at a chair nearby.

  “Thanks.” Krista sat.

  “I’m Josh, by the way. Mineral water?”

  “No, thank you. Did you know Brittany personally?”

  He rolled his chair sideways and opened a glass-fronted fridge packed with water bottles. He took one out and unscrewed the top.

  “The thing about Brittany,” he said, rolling back, “she was really trying, you know?”

  “You mean at yoga or...?” She wanted him talking, but she wasn’t following.

  “Life.” He sipped his water. “Everything—body, mind, and spirit. She’d turned a corner.”

  “Sounds like you were close.”

  “We were friends. I miss her a lot.” He stared pensively at his desk.

  “Do you know if she had a boyfriend around the time of her death?”

  “The police detective, he asked the same thing. I don’t think so.”

  “But you don’t know for sure?”

  He shook his head. “Brittany hadn’t been going out much. She wasn’t a partier.”

  Krista glanced into the studio as all the bodies shifted in unison. Not a lot of men in the class.

  She looked back at Josh. “One more thing—have you noticed anyone here who happens to drive a white Avalanche?”

  His face was blank.

  “It’s a pickup truck,” she elaborated. “With sort of a short truck bed.”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar,” he said. “Sorry.”