by Sean Black
‘You couldn’t have just told me you wanted to arrest her?’
‘You weren’t exactly co-operative and easy-going when Brogan and Wilkins wanted to talk to her originally.’ Stanner motioned for Lock to move back from the house. ‘Let’s take a walk,’ he said, striding away from the path leading to the front door where forensic techs flitted in and out.
Raven was already gone, arrested on suspicion of murder and spirited to the LAPD jail facility in Van Nuys where they would keep her until she was arraigned before a judge and a decision made about bail. Then she would be transferred to the Twin Towers, the LA County facility at the LA Century Sheriff Station in Lynwood.
‘You can believe this or not,’ Stanner said, ‘but how we played it wasn’t my call. This department doesn’t like outsiders, especially not private operators. Too often they get in the way.’
‘I was doing my job,’ Lock said, unable to squeeze the anger from his voice.
Stanner patted at his bushy curls. ‘And how do you think I feel? Robbery Homicide think the TMU was babysitting a serial killer. You think that’s going to do a lot for my career? Listen, Lock, you’ll be gone, on to the next gig, guarding some rock star or holding the hand of some CEO, but I still have to work in this force. Making captain? Forget it. I’ll be lucky if I’m not writing parking tickets in West Latte.’ That was the LAPD officer’s shorthand for the ritzy West Los Angeles Division, which contained the upscale B-neighborhoods of Bel Air, Beverly Hills and Brentwood.
‘They really think she’s the perp?’ Lock asked, still trying to get his head around it all.
‘I can’t go too deep into what they have but, yeah, they do.’
‘They have forensics?’
Stanner said nothing.
Lock grabbed at his forearm. ‘So they haven’t. You’re telling me that all they have on her is a motive and a timeline?’
‘Do you listen, Lock? What they have, what they don’t have, they’re not giving any of that to me.’
‘Bullshit. I know how it works. They might be cutting you out of the loop, but you still hear things.’
‘They have some DNA linking her to Cindy Canyon. I don’t know what the deal is with the Larry Johns guy back in Arizona. The fact that he tried to jump her inside the club would suggest they have DNA from there as well, but as far as what they found in his house goes – I just don’t know.’
‘And how are they saying she killed him? He was a grown man from what I know about him.’
‘You know and I know that size doesn’t always come into it. Maybe she tasered him. Used a knife on him? He was off his ass drunk when he was attacked.’
Lock chewed it over for a moment. ‘I don’t buy it. I don’t buy any of it.’
‘Because you’ve been her bodyguard for all of two days? Hardly qualifies you as a character witness.’
‘So why did she leave Cindy Canyon’s body in her own car?’
Stanner shrugged. ‘What better way to explain it than to say someone planted it there? Lot easier than dumping it somewhere, and having to deal with the clean-up. Anyway, listen, it’s not your problem any more.’
Lock sighed. ‘Doesn’t feel that way.’
‘That’s your ego talking, Lock. Hey, you got taken in. So did I. Join the club. Now, do yourself a favour and walk away before you get sucked even further into the mud.’
Lock shook his head. ‘I still think she’s innocent, but …’
‘Go on,’ Stanner said.
‘I visited the production company she worked for a few days ago. They’d offered her a new contract. There was a poster on the wall of a movie she’d done with Cindy Canyon.’
Stanner smiled. ‘You still think butter wouldn’t melt?’
‘It’s circumstantial.’
‘You could have lifted the phone. Called me about it,’ Stanner chided him.
‘I assumed you’d already know.’
Stanner met Lock’s gaze. ‘You’re not sure either, are you?’
Lock remained silent. Stanner was right. If the cops had Raven for the two killings that was their business, although he still didn’t like the way the LAPD were playing this.
The media were already starting to arrive. Satellite vans and honey-wagons cluttered the sidewalks. A serial killer was box office. A female one doubly so. A female one who’d also worked as a porn star was a triple treat. All the press needed now was the knowledge that she’d turned some tricks on the side, maybe pull some Hollywood A-listers in on the action, and they’d have the true-crime story of the decade.
He searched for Carrie but couldn’t see her. He turned back to Stanner. ‘I don’t have to be right about this, but you do. It’s going to look real bad locking up an innocent woman, especially if it turns out she’s the victim.’
Stanner met Lock’s gaze with a cold stare. ‘In this town, there are no victims.’
Thirty-two
Eventually he found Carrie sitting in her car, staring through the windshield as the media circus pitched its tent outside Raven’s house. Angel bounded from the back seat as Lock opened the passenger door, launching herself towards him.
‘She was the killer all along?’ Carrie asked.
Lock ignored the question as he picked up on the flat, deadened look in her eyes. ‘You okay?’
‘I visited that director.’
Lock was getting a sick feeling in his stomach.
‘He pulled a gun on me,’ Carrie went on, still staring straight ahead.
He knelt down so his face was level with hers. ‘What else happened?’
She didn’t say anything.
He felt his guts twist.
‘Nothing. I ran before anything could.’ She turned her head, meeting Lock’s gaze. ‘I thought he was going to rape me, Ryan.’
He felt nauseous, a sensation that was quickly replaced by cold rage. He reached out to touch her but she pushed him away.
‘I don’t know about Raven Lane, but that guy who tried to assault her in the club, if she killed him, then …’ she paused ‘… good for her.’
‘You’re sure nothing happened at that house?’
‘It was a close-run thing.’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe this isn’t as simple as we’d all like to believe.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe the two murders aren’t linked. Or, at least, not the way everyone is assuming. It doesn’t make sense to me that Raven would kill another woman. But what happened to the guy who assaulted her – I could see her doing that.’
Lock took a deep breath, then exhaled loudly, giving himself a moment to reflect. ‘So Raven’s the common thread but we have two killers?’
‘There doesn’t have to be a link, right?’
‘What about Cindy’s body being planted in the trunk of the car? That’s a pretty big coincidence for there not to be a link.’
Carrie pushed a stray strand of blonde hair away from her eyes and Lock was struck by how vulnerable she looked. ‘Cindy’s death might have pushed Raven to the edge, made her feel even more vulnerable. So when Larry Johns came after her, she snapped, thinking that maybe he was the guy who’d killed Cindy, and took him out.’
‘But that means she would have had to follow him back to the house while still having Cindy’s body in her car.’ Lock stopped, worrying the scar at the back of his head with the tips of his fingers. ‘You can see why, if the police think she killed Larry, she could have murdered Cindy as well.’
‘So she puts the body in the trunk herself and then calls you. Why didn’t she just dump it, like the head?’ Carrie said, her voice stronger now. ‘She was set up, Ryan.’
Lock was ahead of her. ‘You think Vice did it?’ he said, sounding skeptical.
‘You should have seen him, Ryan. That guy’s capable of anything.’
‘Well, maybe I should pay him a visit. I was planning on it anyway.’
Carrie reached across to stop him getting out of the car. ‘Be careful. He was armed when I was there.’
<
br /> ‘Don’t worry. I’ve met guys like him before. We’ll see how intimidating he manages to be when he’s facing me.’
Carrie smiled fleetingly, then dug into her bag and pulled out her BlackBerry. ‘Yes? I need a number for an attorney’s office in Century City.’
As she waited for the listing, Lock sighed. ‘I thought you didn’t want to be involved.’
Carrie gave him a sharp look. ‘Guilty or innocent, Raven’s going to need a good lawyer. And I’m going to make damn sure I get her one.’
Thirty-three
Defense Attorney Fay Liepowitz swept into the interview room in a blur of Chanel perfume and designer clothes. Her presence in the Twin Towers jail facility, where Raven was being held pending arraignment, had already drawn concerned looks between the detectives working what had been dubbed by the LA Times and local media as the Porn Canyon Killings.
Liepowitz was trouble. Not only could she pick apart a case better than any other defense attorney in the state of California, she was quick to mobilize traditionally liberal Californian opinion against the LAPD’s supposedly institutional racism and sexism in order to cloud the issue. Los Angeles juries were capable of coming to strange conclusions and Liepowitz knew how to work them.
At forty years old her reputation as a fearsome litigator went far beyond California. A committed feminist, she had been following the case since Cindy Canyon’s head had been found by that creep of an office worker downtown. He’d just noticed those copies of the paper lying there. Yeah, right. If anyone believed that, Fay had a bridge in Brooklyn she would sell them at a knockdown price.
As soon as she had heard of Raven’s arrest via Carrie’s phone call, she’d had her office get straight on to the phones to find out whether Raven had representation. When the answer came back that the authorities were likely to assign Raven a court-appointed attorney, she had stepped into the breach.
As far as Fay Liepowitz was concerned, this wasn’t about whether Raven had killed Canyon and Johns. That was merely the corner piece of the puzzle. No, as far as she was concerned, this was about an industry that brutalized and degraded not just the women who worked in it but all women, and the male-dominated forces in society, like the LAPD, which supported that degradation.
The LAPD might think they were about to put Raven Lane on trial, but if they did, Fay Liepowitz had a shock for them. She was about to put on trial the whole damn adult industry and everyone who supported it. All of those Bible-belt hypocrites who spent more on porn than any other part of the United States, all of those two-faced cowards of legislators in Washington, who decried the women exploited in the movies while their pensions were topped up by the blue-chip companies making millions from selling porn to hotels and cell-phone users – Fay was going to put them all on the stand, metaphorically if not literally. She was going to peel back the curtain on America’s dirtiest little secret, which reduced women, all women, to pieces of meat just to make a buck. This case had all the ingredients to send the media into a frenzy. And it would give Fay her biggest platform yet.
In her opinion, whether Raven Lane had committed the murders was secondary. In fact, part of her hoped Raven had killed Larry Johns and cut off his balls. Twenty years of practising law, and Fay had finally found the ultimate case, all wrapped up with a red Hollywood bow, that would have the whole nation watching. Now, the first part of her task was in many ways the most delicate: transforming Raven Lane, at least in the eyes of the American public, from serial-killer femme fatale to a woman who had rejected her role as victim and decided to fight back.
Now, in the interview room, Fay decided to drop the traditional handshake, as Raven got up from her chair, looking tiny and perfectly vulnerable. Fay went to hug her, but Raven took a step back and ducked away.
In the end, Fay had to settle for the handshake but before she had a chance to deploy the speech she had prepared on the way over (a journey she had taken from her plush suite of offices in Century City in her top-of-the-line Mercedes Benz CL65 AMG), Raven had beat her to the punch.
‘I’m not a victim. I’m not a cause célèbre. And I’m not a serial killer. So I don’t want to end up going down for life because you want to make a name for yourself, and it’ll give you something to talk about at your next five-hundred-dollars-a-plate dinner where a bunch of rich anorexic bitches from Beverly Hills whine about how much they’re discriminated against. You understand me, lady?’
Fay smiled. ‘I’ve never quite had those instructions from a client before, but you can rest assured that my primary function and that of my entire law firm will be to get you out of here.’
‘Good,’ Raven said.
Pulling a yellow legal pad from a soft-leather Gucci folio, Fay sat across from Raven. ‘Okay, so take me through this from the start.’
The flash of anger that Raven had shown a moment ago seemed to fall from her face. She took a breath. ‘I got the first letter about six or so months ago—’
‘No,’ Fay interrupted. ‘Listen, your case might go any number of ways, depending upon what the other side has, so I’m going to need some stuff I might be able to plea-bargain with. I’m not saying it’ll come to that, but I want you to go right back for me.’
Raven eyed her with suspicion. ‘I didn’t do it. Don’t you get that? I’m innocent,’ she said, her voice inching up in pitch and volume with every syllable.
Fay cleared her throat. Whenever she had a client who had never found themselves jammed up in the gears of the criminal-justice system she had to explain the same thing to them. It often came as a hammer blow as it sank in, as if Fay were snatching out from under them every belief they had held, which in a way she was.
‘Raven,’ she said, putting down her pen. ‘This is America. It’s not about guilt or innocence. It’s about playing the game. The best player wins. Now, thankfully for you, I’m top of the league compared to those bozos out there,’ she continued, waggling a thumb at the door behind her. ‘So, if you want to go home, you have to help me out here.’
Fay put both hands on the table between them, and opened her palms. ‘Now what’s it to be?’
Thirty-four
Darkness was falling fast in the hills above Hollywood as Lock counted down house numbers until he was sure he was close to the address Carrie had given him for Vince Vice. Despite the ebbing away of hours since she had told him about her encounter with the director, the quiet rage that Lock felt had not left him. If anything, it had taken root and blossomed.
He was going to cause Vice some pain, that wasn’t in question. But he had to proceed with care. Guys like Vice were usually the first people to go squealing like a stuck pig to the cops, should someone decide to give them a taste of their own medicine.
He had talked it through with Ty earlier in the afternoon, and Ty had suggested that he call some of his homeboys from Long Beach and have them pay a visit, but Lock had declined the offer. Making the phone call to have someone else do your dirty work was, in the eyes of the law, more serious than doing it yourself. Plus, from what Lock knew of Ty’s former buddies in that neighborhood, they were apt to shoot Vince Vice in the head rather than scare him.
In the end, Ty had stayed behind with Kevin, and Lock had come alone. Much as he enjoyed Ty’s company, and it was good to have someone watching your back, this felt personal enough that he didn’t crave company.
Lock parked on the narrow street and got out of the car. Stepping on to the sidewalk he was immediately buffeted by a warm gust of air. The devil winds were back with a vengeance, he thought, as he walked past the open gates and started up the slope towards the house.
He pressed the buzzer at the front door. No answer. And no sign of anyone stirring inside.
Lock stepped back and walked to an open carport that held two vehicles. The first was a Dodge Viper, the second an Escalade. He touched the engines of both cars. They were stone cold. Unless Vice had walked somewhere, which seemed unlikely in this neighborhood of twisted canyon roads, he was e
ither asleep or hiding out.
He went to the back of the house. Walking along the concrete lip, he was almost level with the kitchen before he noticed the smashed window. He looked down at the ground. There were no shards of glass anywhere to be seen. That told him the window had been smashed from the outside in, rather than by someone breaking out of the house. Jagged glass teeth still jutted from the frame. With this type of construction it would have taken a lot to punch through a window this size.
He edged along the lip, and caught his breath. He stared into the kitchen. There was blood everywhere. It lay in a thick, heavy sludge in the sink, patterned the walls and the counters. It was smeared across the floor. Lock had done a nine-month tour in Sierra Leone, and this was the most blood he had seen at any one time since then.
Torn about what to do next he stood there, the metallic smell burning his nostrils. The concrete lip he was standing on seemed to narrow as the drop beyond it deepened. His heart thumped a staccato beat.
If there had been a body and it wasn’t moving he would have left this to the cops. But there was no body. Someone might still be inside. They might even be alive. Although how someone could survive the loss of so much blood he had no idea.
He scanned the bottom of the window frame for an entry point. Finding a fourteen-inch gap where the glass was entirely gone, he levered himself up, and quickly realized that he would have to clamber inside over the marble counter top. But the counter was slick with blood, and there was no way he’d be able to avoid it. Reluctantly, he lowered himself and called into the house. ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’
The only answer was a heavy silence. Lock retraced his steps, skirting back to the front of the house. He aimed a heavy boot at the door.
On the eighth or ninth assault, the door peeled back from the frame, only by an inch or two, but it gave him the room he needed. He ran back to the Range Rover and retrieved a crowbar.
He jogged back to the front door, shimmied the crowbar into the gap and used it to pop open the door. A final kick separated the chain, and he was inside. More blood pooled directly in front of him at the foot of the stairs. Either side, the floor was clear. There was nothing for the first two steps, then a blob on the third.