No One Will Hear You

by Matt Clemens

  “New Mustang,” Polk said. He was already running the plates. “It’s his. You’re good, Lieutenant.”

  “We’re good.”

  Soon Amari was using a slim jim to open the door. She unlatched the trunk from inside the driver’s compartment.

  She told her partner, “Check the glove box—I got the trunk.”

  Terrant’s off-duty piece, a snub-nose .38, lay holstered in the spare-tire compartment of an otherwise empty trunk.

  “Got it,” she called, relieved.

  Polk came around with the car’s registration and Terrant’s insurance card—both laminated.

  “This guy may not’ve been gay,” Polk said, “but he sure was a neat freak. I mean, who the hell gets this shit laminated?”

  “A very careful man,” Amari said.

  “Not that careful,” Polk said. “He’s dead.”

  “Yeah, and doesn’t it bother you?”

  “Cop getting killed bothers hell out of me.”

  “Right, but you’re not seeing it. I don’t think the killer knew Terrant was on the job.”

  Polk studied her.

  Amari said, “He’s very careful, our Terrant.”

  “Okay….”

  “Trained observer, a cop, anal-retentive careful.” “Right.”

  “So what does Billy Shears, possibly unaware he’s zeroed in on an off-duty cop, have to do to penetrate that much defense?”

  “Be one sneaky mother,” Polk said. “Smart, too.”

  Amari said, “I’ll say. … Let’s go in and see if we can be smart, too. And maybe even sneaky….”

  The interior was dark barn wood, cowboy paraphernalia, and a hardwood dance floor; a mechanical bull lurked in one corner, a seventies artifact on display. Customers were scant, with a female bartender on hand, as well as the owner, a tall woman, six-two easy in her cowboy boots, towering over Amari.

  Her name was Julia Stowe and her jeans were tight, her tank top emblazoned with the bar’s logo. She and Amari spoke in a corner booth while Polk talked to the bartender and handful of patrons.

  Once they were seated, Amari felt a little less like one of the munchkins interviewing Dorothy.

  Hard but attractive, the owner asked, “So is this about that murder over at the old Ramada Inn?”

  “Yes, Ms. Stowe. This is the victim.”

  Julia looked at the photo. “Christ, it’s Danny….”

  “Friend, or just a regular customer?

  “Both. He came in to dance damn near every week. Good guy. Cute-ass scarecrow, our Danny.”

  The woman wasn’t tearing up, but her sadness didn’t seem faked.

  “Was he here last Wednesday?”

  “Think so.”

  “Think or know?”

  “Know.”

  “His car was in your parking lot.”

  ”That Mustang?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Peggy, she’s the bartender talking to your partner?”

  “Yes?”

  “She mentioned the Mustang on Friday, said it’d been here a couple days.”

  “Why didn’t you have it towed?”

  “Well … I knew it was Danny’s.”

  “And you didn’t call him, or do anything else about it?”

  “I did call. Left messages on his cell Friday, Saturday, too—fact, I just called about an hour ago and said if he didn’t get it out of here tonight, I would have to have the damn thing towed.”

  “You have the cell numbers of a lot of your customers?”

  “No. Danny and me were … friendly. No wonder it went straight to voice mail….”

  “You see him Wednesday night?”

  “Yeah, sure. I said I did.”

  “Talk to him?”

  “Just said hi. Not a real conversation.”

  “See him with anybody?”

  “Well, he was dancing. That’s why he came here. Saw him with a few different girls. He didn’t have a regular partner, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “He wasn’t a … one-girl guy.”

  Amari nodded. “You ever … dance with him?”

  “A few times.”

  “So then he wasn’t gay?”

  The owner grinned. “Danny Terrant? Boy, are you confused. Danny had plenty of notches on his belt. And they weren’t guys.”

  “Could he have batted for both teams?”

  “No. Trust me, honey. He liked girls.”

  What the hell was going on?

  The family of their other Billy Shears victim insisted their man was straight; now someone who knew Terrant—probably had slept with him—was telling her their second victim was straight, too.

  Had the West Hollywood hotel been strictly to throw them off the track? Smart. Sneaky.

  But who … what … was Billy? A cross-dressing man who could conceivably be perceived by his victims as a woman?

  Or was Billy Shears really … Billie Shears?

  Amari said, “Tell me about your security cameras.”

  “One by the bar, one by the door, another on the parking lot.”

  “Do we need a warrant?”

  “No need. I liked Danny. Just Wednesday’s DVDs?”

  “For now,” Amari said.

  “Be right back,” the woman said, climbing out.

  Polk came over, jerked a thumb toward the bar. “Danny hooked up with that cute bartender.”

  “He also nailed the owner.”

  “For a shy beanpole, boy got around. Probably not gay.”

  “Probably not.”

  “You think our killer’s maybe a transvestite?”

  “Maybe. Or a woman.”

  “… A woman?”

  “Yeah. A woman. A female. The fairer sex?” Polk sat down. “This is some screwed-up shit, Lieutenant.” “You think?”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Show day again—not another live show, strictly speaking, but because of Don Juan, Harrow would be doing live wraparounds. Decisions had yet to be made about just what he would say about—and to—Don Juan.

  No studio audience, thank God. Harrow was in his office going over material for tonight, feeling the strain of a fast-moving, brutal week.

  The team had been working very long hours since that body had been left as a grisly message on their doorstep. LAPD had quickly identified the victim, a dental assistant named Gina Hannan, by her fingerprints. Turned out in college Gina had been booked for disturbing the peace when she had been arrested at … a peace rally.

  But Don Juan had already emptied Gina’s bank account into a Caymans one, and by the time Jenny tracked it down, the funds in the Islands had disappeared.

  The video from the network’s security cameras revealed very little—a shoulder here, a blur of rear view there, killer walking away. He wore a baseball cap, jeans jacket, gloves, jeans, and work boots, and Jenny figured him at medium height. Dark shaggy hair.

  Don Juan had cased the building well. He knew the holes in the cameras’ coverage and exploited them.

  Though the delivery of the corpse was not caught on camera, there was footage enough to pinpoint the time—9:28 P.M. Downtown Los Angeles, around the UBC complex, was a ghost town Sunday evening.

  Jenny hacked traffic cams for blocks without spotting Don Juan returning to his car. Security footage from UBC and its neighbors offered no indication the killer had parked out front when he dumped the body.

  Pall and Choi helped Jenny check security footage of the parking garages within three blocks of UBC. Carting the body more than a relatively short distance seemed unlikely, and a parking garage would provide some shelter for whatever preparations were needed to transfer the corpse (wrapped in some fashion?) from a trunk or backseat.

  Each tech took a garage and, finally, Jenny spotted something: a Ford Focus pulling out of a parking ramp nine minutes after the body had been dropped.

  “Gotcha,” she said, blowing up a still frame to where she could make out the licen
se number.

  Frowning, Pall asked, “Who waits almost ten minutes before he leaves a crime scene?”

  Choi put in: “And what the hell was he doing for ten minutes?”

  “Nine,” Jenny said. “Calling the media?”

  Her associates paused; then both nodded.

  Soon she’d hacked the DMV to learn the plates on the Ford Focus were registered to a rental company’s silver Nissan.

  Another dead end.

  Like the card stuck in the flowers—a run-of-the-mill greeting, available in a hundred flower shops around the Southland.

  The roses, on the other hand, were rare. Michael Pall was able to identify them as Black Pearls, an uncommon variety.

  Utilizing interns and production assistants, Harrow’s team contacted the over seventeen hundred retail and wholesale florists in the greater Los Angeles area. None had received orders for that particular type of rose.

  “He’s got to be getting them somewhere,” Harrow said to Pall and Jenny. “Either he has a rose garden, a greenhouse, or works at one. Find out who sells Black Pearl roses and start digging from that direction.”

  Meanwhile, Amari was keeping Harrow posted on what was now being called the Billie Shears case—the gay angle of the first killing apparently a red herring courtesy of a killer, who was likely female.

  Internet searches for Jeff Baileys generated just under one hundred thousand hits. The computer search for Al Roberts—the guest in whose room Danny Terrant died—yielded another forty-three thousand hits. A mountain of information to scale.

  As he sat at his desk, morning of show day, Harrow didn’t have anything resembling a workable plan. Too much information was almost as bad as no information.

  His cell vibrated—Amari.

  “We have another apparent Don Juan victim.”

  The bastard had finally made good on his promise. Double-feature indeed. …

  Harrow felt sick. “Where?”

  “7008 Hollywood Boulevard. In front of a coffee shop. Body’s sprawled across several Walk of Fame stars—including Errol Flynn’s.”

  “Cute,” Harrow said bitterly. “Errol Flynn played—”

  “Don Juan, yeah. Plus, she’s diagonally across the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Our guy’s a showman, if nothing else.”

  For this early in the day, he felt awfully weary. “Nude? Bouquet of roses? Same as before?”

  “Almost. Brunette. And that damn card again.”

  “And no one saw anything.” Not a question.

  “Not that we know of,” Amari said. “I’m getting video from the traffic cams.”

  “I can think of another difference—besides the hair color.”

  “Which is?”

  “Crime Seen didn’t get a video before the body was found.”

  “Maybe he sent it to somebody else.”

  “Or is he accelerating and getting hurried, even sloppy?”

  “That sounds like wishful thinking.”

  He sighed. “You want me down there, Anna?”

  “No. No, there’ll be media, and while the chief likes us cooperating with you, discreetly, he doesn’t want the public to think the LAPD is leaning on a TV show.”

  “That sounds like a paraphrase.”

  “Yeah. I skipped the colorful qualifiers. You’re a Midwest boy. Tender sensibilities. … Keep you posted.”

  “Please.”

  He had barely clicked off when Dennis Byrnes stormed in, unannounced.

  “Morning, Dennis.”

  Byrnes arranged himself in the visitor’s chair opposite Harrow, sitting straight, trying to assume his natural superiority despite being stuck on the wrong side of the desk.

  “I need your word,” he said.

  “About?”

  “You have to stay on script tonight.”

  “Where Don Juan is concerned, yes, understood. But we haven’t finalized it yet.”

  “I expect you and the writers to have something to me by two o’clock. Lucian Richards at legal needs to clear it, and he says that will take time.”

  “Two o’clock might not be practical.”

  “Why is that?”

  “There’s been another Don Juan murder.”

  “Christ!”

  Harrow filled the exec in.

  “So you want to cut it closer to the wire,” Byrnes said, thinking, “since this is breaking news. … Okay, I’ll talk to Richards. Everyone is agreed that no portion of any of these videos can be shown on the air—third one hasn’t shown up yet?”

  “No.”

  “For once I wouldn’t mind if the competition had it instead of us. This is dangerous, J.C. Delicate. The network’s financial life could be at stake.”

  “So are the lives of innocent women—three have died so far.”

  “Don’t go self-righteous on me. I’m a husband and a father, not a monster. A lot of people depend on this network for their living, I’ll have you—”

  Harrow stopped him with a raised palm. “Understood.”

  Byrnes nodded crisply, rose, then stopped at the door. “Listen, J.C. I want your word—don’t go adlibbing us into another crusade.”

  “Last time I did that, your precious network made a fortune.”

  “Just don’t. We’ll behave responsibly, we’ll behave professionally … and if you and your people, working with the LAPD, can bring this bastard in, I’ll revel in it. I’ll see to it you a get nice fat bonus, just … tonight? Stay on script.”

  “Sure. Soon as we have one.”

  Byrnes closed his eyes, nodded. “When we have one.”

  He was gone.

  Show day was a pain for Harrow—as star and executive producer of Crime Seen, he had to view and approve edits of segments, a process that took many hours, often right up to air time. With live segments on tap, he also suffered through script read-throughs and (eventually) hair and makeup.

  Today, after lunch, he sequestered himself back in his office for a session of answering fan mail.

  Usually, he wouldn’t mess with this on show day, but he needed a distraction. Though most of his business and personal correspondence was e-mail now, fan mail remained the old-fashioned, snail-mail variety—fifty or so letters a week still came his way, sometimes more.

  He escaped into the task, finding it oddly relaxing, reading half a dozen letters, mostly requests for autographed photos; just one marriage proposal this week.

  The next letter had his name and the network’s address computer-printed on the envelope with no return address. Within was a single sheet of white bond with a short message, probably off the same laser printer.

  JC

  You are some straight Harrow. Ha! Ha!

  When the lab geeks test this, they will see it’s really me.

  I just wanted to drop you a line to say I’m a fan of the show and to thank you for the coverage.

  Like the old story goes, it doesn’t matter what they’re saying as long as they’re talking about you.

  One more thing, you know the trophy I take.

  I want to add yours to the collection, that would be juicy. But you will have to wait your turn.

  BS

  He wished he hadn’t touched it, but he had.

  The “trophy”-taking aspect of Billy Shears (as the media was still spelling it) had been withheld; the letter writer apparently knew what he—or she—was talking about.

  Setting the thing back on his desk, cognizant of where he had touched the paper, his first call was to Laurene Chase, their in-house crime scene investigator. She could bag it and tag it.

  “I want everybody else on this,” he told her on the phone. “I know it’s show night, but I’m the only one going on live. I want every kind of test on the letter, plus let’s invent some new ones.”

  “You don’t think there’s any way this could be a hoax?”

  “No, I don’t. And after you read it, you won’t, either.”

  His next call was to Amari.

  “Nothing f
or you yet,” she said. “Spent most of the day at Errol Flynn’s star.”

  “I just got a fan letter.”

  “So you’re popular.”

  “From Billie Shears.”

  “Hell you say! … And you didn’t know what it was, so you got fingerprints all over it.”

  “Not all over it. On it.”

  “I’ll grab Polk and be right over there.”

  “Good,” he said. “Laurene’s coming up to bag it.”

  “Twenty minutes,” she said and clicked off.

  Eighteen minutes later, the two detectives entered his office.

  They both read the letter in its new cellophane home. They also studied the envelope.

  Polk said, “He’s a little vague about the trophy.”

  “Seems pretty suggestive to me,” Harrow said.

  “If we send it to the lab,” Amari said, “we won’t know whether it’s authentic for weeks—even if I put a rush on it.”

  Harrow shrugged. “I know where there’s a pretty good crime lab.”

  “Is that right?”

  “And you’ll go right to the front of the queue.”

  Polk was frowning, but Amari wasn’t.

  She said, “I have the go-ahead from the chief himself to work hand in hand with you and your team.”

  “So the answer is yes?”

  “Answer is yes. Use that kid Anderson as our conduit, to protect the chain of evidence, but the answer is hell yes.”

  “Good.”

  She frowned at him, not angry, just serious. “Listen, J.C.—Chief Daniels phoned Captain Womack personally today. Now that Don Juan appears to have killed three times—prerequisite for bringing in the FBI—the chief had to call in the Behavioral Science Unit. They’ll have agents here tomorrow.”

  “Just for Don Juan, or Billie Shears, too?”

  “That I can’t tell you. I can say—as you see by my eager willingness to get help from your TV show lab—I am feeling flexible. Normally the FBI is about my favorite thing next to stomach influenza. But right now anything that helps get these two evil assholes off the street is fine by me.”

  “Agreed.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “In the meantime, what does Don Juan want?”

  “Attention,” Harrow said without hesitation. He didn’t need Michael Pall to feed him that.

  “Okay,” she said calmly. “If Don Juan wants attention … why not give it to him?”