by Matt Clemens
With the building and statue lit up against a clear sky, a nearly full moon wielding its ivory brush, the scene had a stark beauty interrupted by a single work light and two officers near the door. They stood over a body deposited atop the building’s front steps.
Heading toward the crime scene, Amari said, “You did grow up in Los Angeles, right?”
“Rub it in, why don’t you?”
A voice behind them called, “Wait up!”
They turned to see Special Agent Mark Rousch trotting up. Middle of the night or not, the agent wore a dark suit, white shirt, crisply knotted tie, and “Werewolves of London” perfect hair.
Did Rousch ever sleep, Polk wondered, or need a shave?
“Another Don Juan victim,” the FBI man said.
Not a question.
As they drew closer, an answer came anyway. Uniformed cops bookended the unclad brunette sprawled at the observatory’s entrance. A bouquet of Black Pearl roses draped her left arm, as if Miss America had just been crowned.
Eyes closed, dark hair fanned out, framing the pretty face….
Polk had a twitch of memory.
“This is the youngest yet,” Rousch said, shaking his head, his expression as pale as moonlight.
“All murder victims are old,” Amari said.
Rousch looked at her.
“You can’t get older than dead.”
“Erica Thornton,” Polk said.
The others turned.
Amari frowned. “You know her?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I recognize her. She was the runner-up on the second season of Survival Island.”
“What the hell …?” Rousch said.
“Reality TV,” Amari explained and sighed. To Polk, she added, “Pretty sure?”
“Real damn sure.”
Amari asked the nearest uniformed officer, “Who found the body?”
The officer pointed down the building to a man in security-guard uniform, standing alone, hands fig-leafed.
“I’ll be damned,” Amari said.
Polk groaned. “Not our wannabe law enforcement professional….”
Rousch frowned. “Who is that clown?”
The security guard waved to them and smiled in a goofy embarrassed manner.
Amari said, “Clown is right—he found Wendi Erskine at the Hollywood sign and screwed up the crime scene by driving through it.”
“Christ,” the FBI man said.
“But wait, there’s more,” Polk said in infomercial style. “Then our friendly park ranger opens up the gate and lets some uniforms go down and gawk at a real live dead naked female.”
“He needs a new hobby,” Rousch said. “Let’s have a chat with the guy. Name?”
Simultaneously Amari and Polk blurted: “Jason Wyler.”
The fed made a beeline, and Amari and Polk followed, hanging back a little.
“And what,” Amari asked, voice low, “is the first rule of criminal investigation?”
“First on the scene,” Polk said, “first suspect.”
“And this sterling citizen has been first on the scene twice?”
“Could be a coincidence.”
“LeRon—do we believe in coincidences?”
“I’m just sayin’ … it’s not Wyler’s fault if some crazy-ass killer decides to dump another corpse in Griffith Park.”
“We’ll see.”
The skinny security guard pushed his wire-frame glasses farther up his nose, smiling nervously. As the trio of detectives planted themselves before him, Wyler was bouncing foot to foot, an excited puppy blessed with three masters.
Rousch was displaying his ID, but Wyler didn’t seem to notice, homing in on Amari.
“Lieutenant,” Wyler said, “you’ll be proud of me.”
“Will I?”
“I stayed away from the body, just like you told me that other time—down at the sign?”
Like they needed prompting to remember the previous Don Juan victim Wyler discovered.
“Good for you, Jason,” Amari said dryly. “Tell us what happened this time.”
“I was making my rounds, just like always. Saw some teenagers partying over there.” He pointed past the entrance. “I told them to move on.”
“And?”
“And they did. I stopped back later to check up on ‘em. That’s when I saw … you know, the body. At the door?”
Prompting again. Oh, that body. …
Polk said, “And you didn’t touch her?”
A sharp head shake. “Learned my lesson last time.”
Amari said, “What time did you see the kids?”
“Just after midnight.”
“Sure about the time, Mr. Wyler?”
Eager nod. “Checked my watch, in case I had to write up a report. On those kids?”
“Okay. When did you get back?”
“An hour and a half. Like usual.”
Amari rubbed her forehead. “So, you didn’t check back until your next round?” “Right.”
“So the killer had ninety minutes between you shooing off the party animals and coming back?”
“Sounds right.”
“You see anything unusual when you were pulling up?”
“First time or second time?”
“Second time. Checking on the kids.”
“Nothing unusual or suspicious, no. Except for the body.”
That was fairly suspicious, Polk thought. Maybe even unusual. …
Rousch said, “Possible the kids saw something.”
Amari asked the security guard: “Did you get any of their names?”
“The kids? No.”
Polk asked, “They have a car?”
“Oh yeah—black and shiny. Looked fast.”
“Make?” Amari asked. “Model?”
“Well, I think it was a convertible. Foreign, maybe. Japanese?”
Amari was studying Wyler. Maybe deciding whether to pistol whip him or not.
Polk said, “Did you get a license number?”
“No.”
So they had no suspects, and thanks to their fellow professional here, they didn’t even have potential witnesses to interview.
Amari and Rousch asked Wyler a few more questions, getting nowhere. Then they told him to wait, and he nodded, grateful to be needed by fellow pros.
As the trio returned to the body, Amari said, “We’ve got an inept if punctual security guard, and a park exhibit that’s closed tomorrow.”
Rousch said, “Point being?”
“Don Juan had a ninety-minute window for a body dump that required maybe three minutes.”
“What about security video?”
Polk said he’d check, but added, “Knowing our buddy Don Juan, either there won’t be any vid, or he found a way to circumvent it.”
Amari said, “Once you’ve checked, LeRon, grab Security Guard Wyler and give him the pleasure of a ride to a real honest-to-goodness police station.”
Polk shook his head. “What do you think we’re going to get out of him? He’s a dipshit.”
“Is he? Or is that an act? Either way, he’s the tie to two of the bodies in this investigation … and that earns him the right to be interviewed for real. Sweat him. Keep him there all day, if you have to. But find out whether he’s an idiot or just a good actor.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Polk said dejectedly. “But if this guy’s acting this stupid, he’s too good for reality TV. He needs his own series.”
“Don Juan has his own series,” Amari reminded him.
Chapter Thirty-one
Carmen Garcia did not feel safe.
Doors locked, alarm system set, lights on, TV too (some stupid infomercial), but alone and on her couch, cell phone at her ear (ringing, ringing, ringing) and not feeling safe at all….
On the coffee table before her, laptop open, the innocuous if suggestive file name with its small black letters somehow screamed at her.
Finally Harrow’s voice came: �
��Carmen, what do you need?”
“You, I’m afraid. … Don Juan e-mailed me again.”
“Another video?”
“Another video.”
“Sure it’s from him? You didn’t—”
“I did look at it. Started to. It’s from him.”
“I can come right over.”
“Could we do it at the office?” She didn’t want to stay here a second longer than necessary.
Harrow said, “I don’t think we should sit on this till eight, do you?”
“No. I meant go in a little early.”
“Early, like … now?”
Quarter till three. No one in the place except … me.
“Early like now,” she said.
“Okay. I think that’s a good call. I’ll round up everybody, and inform UBC security.”
She threw on a sweatshirt, jeans, and running shoes, and prepared to go out into the night, or anyway the early-morning dark. Not that she was afraid of the dark—the dark didn’t kill women—but the monster who knew enough about her to send a video to her personal e-mail certainly did.
The others on the Killer TV team, with their former cop status, were licensed to carry firearms. But Carmen was not former law enforcement, so she went into the kitchen and selected (to tuck away in her purse) the biggest kitchen knife from a cutlery set she’d purchased on another sleepless night watching infomercials.
In fact, when she switched off her TV, Billy Mays was smiling and shouting at her. That Mays was still hawking stuff on the airwaves, long after his death, creeped her out. She wondered if any of Wendi Erskine’s infomercials were still airing….
Her only stop on the way to the office was at a convenience mart for a cup of coffee—too early for drive-thru latte. At nearly three a.m., the freeway was weirdly user-friendly, and the streets of Los Angeles, particularly the downtown, were all but deserted.
Even as she neared UBC, her eyes kept returning to the rearview mirror. She supposed she was just being paranoid, but was it paranoia considering what she’d been through? Was it just caution?
Like most people her age, she had never considered the fragility of her own life. That was before Kansas. Now she knew better.
She pulled her Prius up into the UBC parking ramp. If a parking garage could be naturally unsettling, being in an almost-empty one was worse—and not long ago, Don Juan had left a body on the UBC doorstep, and could certainly get in here and kidnap someone, and …
… and that, she thought, was paranoia.
Empty garage or not, she drove to her reserved parking space on the third level. She got out, saw no one else around in the concrete chamber, locked her car, and started the walk halfway across the garage to the elevators.
She strode quickly, her heels tapping on concrete echoing like machine-gun fire. Under one arm was her laptop, her purse (with butcher knife within) thrown over that same shoulder. In the other hand was a pepper-spray mini-canister, finger on the trigger.
Security lighting was minimal and most of the garage remained shrouded in darkness, a breeze whipping through to help hurry Carmen across.
Then, breathing heavily, as if she’d just run the hundred-yard dash, she found herself at the elevator, pushing the button.
The elevator doors whispered open, and a voice just behind her said, “Carmen …”
She whirled and saw only a blur of black leather jacket and black hair. Bringing up the pepper spray, she was about to trigger it when she realized the figure was Billy Choi.
Her coworker held up his hands in surrender and turned his head away, figuring out that he was on the pepper-spray precipice.
“Sorry, Billy.”
“Talk about close calls,” Choi said.
“I’m so sorry….”
The elevator arrived and they stepped on, Choi pushing their floor.
“It’s okay. You got another video and you’re edgy. I get that. But let’s work on that itchy trigger finger.”
She beamed at him, relieved she hadn’t hurt him, glad not to be alone.
He grinned at her. “Jeez, don’t you know my voice by now?”
“I thought you were Don Juan.”
“Never been mistaken for him. Been taken for John Cho a few times … Ken Leung, once….”
“Could have been worse than pepper spray.”
“Yeah?”
She opened her purse and the butcher knife winked at Choi. He did not wink back.
Soon they were in the conference room, where (predictably) Jenny had beaten them. The little computer queen—in pale blue T-shirt, jeans, and ponytail—quickly and wordlessly hooked Carmen’s laptop up to the big screen.
Within five minutes, everyone had arrived, coffee distributed. No doughnuts or other goodies, though, not considering what they were about to watch.
Harrow came in last. He wore a yellow polo and jeans and looked far more alert than the rest, with the exception of Jenny. Of course.
“You’ll note again that no cameras are present.” He sat. “All right—let’s look at this damn thing….”
Chase said, “Where are the LAPD? This is evidence.”
“Lieutenant Amari, Detective Polk, and Special Agent Rousch are already at the crime scene.”
“Which is where?” Michael Pall asked. He was in a suit, whereas the rest were in whatever they could grab—T-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans. But at least he didn’t look so bright-eyed behind the Clark Kent specs.
“Griffith Park,” Harrow said.
Anderson blurted, “Hollywood sign again?”
“The observatory,” Harrow said.
“Griffith Park Observatory,” Pall said, as if tasting the words. Then: “Why there? Doesn’t make sense.”
When their profiler made an observation like that, everything stopped until he’d explained.
He did: “The Hollywood sign, the network doorstep, the Errol Flynn star, the Chinese Theater … they all have something to do with show business. What does the Griffith Park Observatory have to do with show biz?”
Chase said, “A lot of movies have been shot there.”
Choi said, “Yeah, right—Rebel Without a Cause.”
“No,” Carmen said. She’d known at once. “Griffith Park Observatory—where you go to see the stars.”
Harrow was nodding. “Which is what Don Juan and Billie Shears want to be—stars. Superstars.”
No one challenged the theory.
Choi said to Harrow, “Did your friend the lieutenant say whether there are any clues this time?”
“Nothing significant had turned up when I spoke to her half an hour ago. She said the observatory closed at ten last night, and isn’t open on Monday. Victim was on the front doorstep.”
Chase asked, “Who found the body?”
“Same security guard who found Wendi Erskine, and he’s being looked at hard. The victim has been tentatively identified as Erica Thornton—she was on a reality show called Survival Island.”
“I remember her,” Choi said.
“That’s a UBC show,” Carmen said. “Don Juan sticking it to us again?”
“Not just us,” Chase said.
“No,” Harrow said gravely. “Not just us. … Okay, let’s get to it.”
Harrow nodded to Carmen, and she made a keystroke.
And then it began …
… the drugged nude woman on the bed, blade slashing, woman writhing, spraying blood, this attack even more brutal, more vicious than the others, over and over, again and again, knife arcing, flaying, the life literally bleeding out of the victim. …
Carmen made herself watch.
She had viewed the start of it at home, before shutting the thing off and calling Harrow. Now the sheer ferocity of the attack shook her, terrified her. So incredibly savage was the slaying that even in this room full of people, she felt alone with her fear.
“You failed to grasp the inevitability of my ascension to stardom,” the now-familiar, processed, metallic voice said. “You insult me
by suggesting this also-ran Shears is my equal. For this indignity, you must pay. How you will pay is my little secret—mine is a scenario with surprises yet to be revealed. Suffice to say my next lover will give you no alternative but to acknowledge that Don Juan is without question … the greatest lover of all.”
The video ended, the lights came up, and no one said anything for what seemed forever to Carmen. Thirty seconds.
Michael Pall said, “He’s devolving.”
No one disagreed.
Harrow asked, “What do we do about it?”
That the seasoned investigators around this table had no immediate response was almost as disturbing to Carmen as that video.
Choi said, “Yeah, I know the profiler lingo, too—he’s devolving, he’s accelerating. Well, we know he’s picking up speed. But we also know he’s playing us. That’s bullshit about us insulting him—he and Billie Shears are in it together.”
“But he doesn’t know we know that,” Harrow said.
Pall, brightening, said, “And that gives us a small advantage. He’s playing out a narrative, which would suggest an end goal—some spectacular surprise to really make him a ‘star.’ “
“Maybe we already know that surprise,” Harrow said. “Maybe his big finish is to reveal that he and Billie are collaborators, or even lovers.”
“Maybe,” the profiler allowed. “But I would think not—this is building to a special kill … though what we do having going for us is, finally, we are a small step ahead. We know he and Shears are in cahoots. So do the LAPD and the FBI. We have to keep that knowledge out of the media.”
“We are the media,” Carmen said.
“No,” Harrow said. “Not anymore. We’re just a group of hard-ass investigators who are going to find and stop this bastard.”
That got a few smiles.
“You know,” Choi said, “I think I could stomach a doughnut about now. You know—like all hard-ass investigators.”
And that got a few laughs.
But Carmen neither smiled nor laughed.
She was seeing that blade arcing down. …
Chapter Thirty-two
For the two days following the discovery of the victim in the Griffith Park Observatory parking lot, the media had exploded with coverage of both Don Juan and Billie Shears. This pleased Billie very much. But there was an unpleasing wrinkle.