by Robert Ellis
Cabrera remained silent but nodded at the woman in appreciation.
“Thank you,” Matt said. “But I’m curious. You said working the Millie Brown case changed your husband. How?”
She shook her head. Matt could tell from the expression on her face that she was looking into the past and that the memories of her husband were good ones, but still painful. Still too close.
“Leo and his partner wanted to solve the case so badly. They were so desperate to get the guy. They couldn’t stop talking about it. They couldn’t let it go at night. Bob Grace practically moved in. We had a house in Santa Monica at the time. I moved here after Leo’s accident. He loved the water. I did, too, but I needed something different.”
“But what about Leo? How did he change?”
She paused a moment, still looking into the past. “It happened after Ron Harris committed suicide. I could tell that Leo was upset about something. He’d lost his appetite and couldn’t get to sleep at night. He was jumpy. He stopped laughing, and he seemed sad. Not on the outside. I mean on the inside.”
“Did he say what was troubling him?”
She shook her head and lowered her voice. “He wouldn’t talk about it. He told me that if he said anything to me, I wouldn’t be safe.”
Another moment passed. Matt traded a quick look with Cabrera, then turned back to Sally Rodriguez. Her eyes were on him, and he could see that she was frightened.
“Are you okay?” he said.
She nodded, but he didn’t believe her.
“Do you have any idea what your husband meant by that?”
“No,” she said. “But it had to be bad. It was the first time that he kept anything from me.”
“Did he bring work home with him? Did he keep files? Is there any chance you brought them with you when you moved?”
“Leo kept a home office,” she said. “But losing him—I don’t know, I really leaned on Bob. He was more than just Leo’s partner. He was a good friend and a wonderful man. He spent two days helping me go through Leo’s things. We cleaned out Leo’s office and threw everything away.”
Matt gazed at Cabrera on the other side of the table. Leo Rodriguez didn’t fall to his death and he didn’t jump. He was pushed off the roof by his own partner, Bob Grace. That wonderful guy who went through Leo’s things after his death and threw everything out.
CHAPTER 30
Matt checked the rearview mirror and was relieved when he didn’t see anyone following them. The list of possibilities seemed to be getting longer. They were on the road after making a short stop at Tommy’s World Famous Hamburgers on North Hill Avenue in Pasadena. Matt had just finished a double cheeseburger with fries and a cup of hot coffee. He hadn’t eaten anything since Laura made him breakfast, which seemed like three or four days ago. Cabrera had inhaled two chili dogs and was sipping a cup of coffee as well.
“Now we know,” Cabrera said.
“Know what?”
“Grace, Orlando, and Plank. Now we know that they murdered Rodriguez just the same way they did Hughes and Frankie Lane. Something about Harris hanging himself in his cell must have meant something to Rodriguez.”
Matt gave him a look. “Or pushed him close enough to the edge that they were afraid he’d talk.”
The thought had a certain weight about it. The idea that Rodriguez might have lost his life for wanting to come forward. Matt let it go, then made a U-turn and pulled up to the curb in front of Dr. Baylor’s house on Toluca Lake Avenue. He had called Baylor from Tommy’s, so there would be no need to climb over the wall tonight.
Cabrera followed him out of the car. “You gotta feel something for Rodriguez’s wife. If she ever finds out what really happened—”
“You mean when, don’t you? We’re gonna solve this case, Denny. We’re gonna see this through.”
Matt rang the buzzer at the gate, then heard the lock release and saw Baylor open the front door. The doctor waited for them on the porch, then introduced himself to Cabrera and shook hands. As they entered the house and Baylor led them down the hall and into his study, Matt noticed that the doctor’s demeanor had changed. That expression of youthful amusement and curiosity that seemed to linger on Baylor’s face this afternoon had completely vanished. Now Baylor seemed edgy and distracted. He looked tired, almost bleary-eyed.
Matt watched him pour himself a glass of water. “How did the autopsy go, Doctor?”
“Not very well,” he said. “Please, both of you, have a seat. Would you like something to drink? Something stronger than mineral water?”
Matt shook his head and remained standing. “What do you mean, not well? Who did the autopsy?”
“Art Madina. I didn’t mean it that way.”
Cabrera cleared his throat. “Is everything all right, Doctor?”
Baylor nodded. As he walked over to the couch, Matt couldn’t help but take in the room. The ornate moldings, the built-in bookshelves, the twenty-foot ceilings, the gas fire burning beneath an elegant mantel, the thick walls and wide-planked floors, the imported carpets that appeared so tasteful, the large canvases that reminded Matt of Jamie Wyeth or maybe his father, Andrew, the oversized windows that opened to the lighted pool and spa on the terrace and the lake beyond. Baylor’s home was something of an architectural wonder in its sheer simplicity and understatement. And Matt’s first impression the other night had been entirely wrong. Baylor’s house didn’t feel like a resort. The place was too comfortable for that. It felt too much like home.
“There’s been a development,” Baylor said.
Matt turned and found the doctor eyeing him carefully. “What happened?”
“What you figured out on your own.” Baylor took another sip of water and lowered his voice. “After the autopsy we compared the results from all three victims. Madina and I agree. It’s more than likely that all three were murdered by the same man. The wounds to the face. There’s no pause, no hesitation—just a clean cut, as if he does this sort of thing every day. By the way, the dental records match. Jane Doe is Brooke Anderson. She grew up in the Midwest. Her mother runs an insurance company. Madina spoke with her over the phone. She’s on her way out to claim the body.”
She had a name. A family who loved her. A presence that seemed closer now. No one said anything for several moments, everything grim. Matt took a seat in the chair beside the couch, thinking about the girl’s mother and the horror she couldn’t possibly see coming when she got a look at her daughter’s face.
Baylor stood up and walked over to the fireplace. “There’s more,” he said. “Madina found a puncture wound on her arm. We think that she was sedated with something, and that’s why there aren’t any signs of a struggle from the rape. It would have to be a drug with a short enough life that it wasn’t picked up in the tox screen. Something that would only last long enough for the killer to prepare her body, move her to Hollywood Hills, and make the cuts to her face. No marks were found on Brown or Novakoff, but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t there. In all probability, they were there but missed.”
Matt was still seeing Brooke Anderson’s ruined face. Still seeing her mother standing over her daughter’s corpse as the medical examiner unzipped the body bag. He remembered reading in Millie Brown’s murder book that Jamie Taladyne cut drywall. He thought about the blade used to slash the girl’s face.
He snapped out of it. After trading quick looks with Cabrera, he turned back to the doctor.
“I’m assuming that you’ve talked to Grace.”
Baylor nodded.
“How did he take it?”
“Not very well. All of a sudden he’s got a lot to lose.”
CHAPTER 31
A lot to lose . . .
Matt backed the Crown Vic into a space at the rear of the lot and killed the headlights. As he looked up and down the rows, he didn’t see Orlando and Plank’s car, and let himself settle into the bucket seat. The station appeared quiet. He was thinking about Laura Hughes and not letting her down. It was
after nine and he would have to get up early in the morning. Brooke Anderson’s mother would be arriving at the coroner’s office at 8:00 a.m. to identify and claim her daughter’s body. Apparently, she was coming alone. The medical examiner had asked Baylor to attend, and Baylor had asked both Matt and Cabrera to join them. For whatever reason, Matt agreed.
“Do you need to go inside for anything?” he said in a quiet voice.
Cabrera looked back at him in the darkness, nervous. “It’s not safe here.”
“I know, but what are we gonna do? We can’t disappear.”
“It’s not safe.”
Matt nodded because he understood. Last night he had fought off the urge to connect the dots. He had pulled off a clean read of Millie Brown’s murder book without bias or any thought of Cabrera or Frankie or even what his imagination, his gut instincts, were trying to tell him early on. But as they drove back from Toluca Lake, Matt had managed to sift through the evidence in his mind and reach the only conclusion he deemed possible.
“What about Baylor?” Cabrera asked.
Matt lowered the window and lit a cigarette. “We didn’t say anything. He has no idea what we’re thinking. All we did is get his take on the girl’s autopsy.”
Cabrera shook his head. “But he knows. I could see it in his eyes.”
“What does he know?”
“He’s smart enough to know that something’s wrong and we’re working it. He’s smart enough to know that all of a sudden there are two sides to this thing, and he could get hurt. I’ll bet he never told Grace that you stopped by his office. And that’s probably why he wants us to be there for the girl’s ID. He wants to know what we know. He wants to keep close. I could see it, Matt. He’s scared. Who wouldn’t be?”
Matt took a deep pull on his cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. “It’s still a work in progress, but here’s how I see it, Denny. Here’s my take. You ready?”
Cabrera nodded.
“Okay,” Matt said. “Okay, then here it is. Millie Brown was murdered and left in a picnic area at the Hollywood Bowl. Grace and Rodriguez were on call that day. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. They were good cops, good detectives with good records, and their hearts were in the right place. But when they got a look at the girl’s body, when they saw how fucked up she was, how deranged the killer must have been, it shook them up so bad that Rodriguez’s wife told us it changed who he fucking was. Grace said the same thing. The murder changed them, and they got all jacked up. They decided that they were gonna get this guy no matter what. Jamie Taladyne worked construction and was cutting drywall at the girl’s house. He was standing right in front of them. He’d been convicted of a sexual assault. He had the history and did time. Even better, he had contact with Millie, and the girl was teasing him and coming on to him and showing off her brand-new body. No doubt about it, Jamie Taladyne was wrestling with his demons. He had everything it takes to be good for that girl’s murder.”
“He had it,” Cabrera said. “So how did he get past a polygraph?”
“Do psychopaths have a conscience? Do they feel remorse? It doesn’t matter anymore. Somehow he passed the test, and Grace and Rodriguez did the same thing any one of us would have done. They cut him loose.”
Cabrera reached for the pack of Marlboros on the console and lit one. Matt noticed that his fingers were quivering as he held the lighter.
“You smoke?” Matt said.
Cabrera took a shallow drag on the cigarette and started coughing. “Never in my life.”
“Why start now?”
He waved the smoke away from his face and set the lighter down. “Because the way things are going, I could be murdered in my sleep tonight. Fuck it. We’re the city’s next two dead guys, remember?”
Matt tried to shrug it off but couldn’t. “What did you do with the murder books?”
“Tossed them in the backseat before we drove out to Pasadena.”
Matt turned and saw the binders on the floor. As he grabbed Millie Brown’s murder book, he asked Cabrera to pull a flashlight out of the glove box. Paging through the chronological record, he found the point when Ron Harris’s name first came up and the high school teacher evolved into a genuine person of interest. He passed the binder over to Cabrera, then ditched his spent cigarette out the window and lit another.
Fuck it.
“Okay,” he said. “Grace and Rodriguez will do anything to find the girl’s killer. Orlando and Plank are on board, and I’m giving them a mulligan, too. They were good detectives with good records, and their hearts were in the right place. But then everything changes. Grace and Rodriguez find out that Harris is doing Millie. The idea of a high school teacher fucking his student makes them sick.”
“Harris was a pervert. He was in a position of trust.”
“And it worked like a magnet. All of a sudden he’s got a target on his back and they’re locked in. They’ve heard from one of Millie’s friends that she wanted out and was threatening him with exposure, so now they’ve got motive.”
Cabrera puffed on his cigarette without inhaling. “They bring him in. They sweat him out. Two teams. Grace and Rodriguez, then Orlando and Plank.”
Matt nodded, his eyes on a cop walking into the station. “They’ve already found semen in the girl’s underwear from her laundry hamper. Like you said, enough to repopulate the planet. They’re feeding Harris, giving him coffee, taking everything he touches out to the lab. They’ve already been through Millie’s computer. They’ve found the e-mails he wrote to her and the e-mails she sent back. All the text messages on her cell phone. They know for a fact that he’s lying to them.”
Cabrera took another puff on his cigarette. “They wear the piece of shit down until he finally breaks. He’s tired and he wants it to end. He can’t see straight. He can’t think straight. He agrees to take a polygraph and he fails. They’ve got him.”
“He fails because in the back of his mind he thinks he’s a criminal for fucking one of his students. He fails for the wrong reason, but Grace and Rodriguez think they’ve finally got confirmation for the murder. They think he’s good for it. They know he’s good for it. It all seems so fucking clear. They’ve got him, Denny. But they still need to seal the deal.”
Cabrera rolled down the window and got rid of his cigarette. “What are you talking about?”
“They swore to themselves that they were gonna get the guy who cut Millie Brown’s face up. They swore to themselves that they were gonna make the freak who killed her pay.”
Cabrera turned and gazed out the windshield as he chewed it over. Several moments passed before he turned back. “The box cutter,” he said, still thinking it through. “You’re saying that they planted it.”
Matt watched a cop exit the building and drive off in a patrol car, then took another long pull on his smoke. “Check the record. I’ll bet they didn’t get a warrant to search Harris’s house until they made the DNA match. They could’ve gone in earlier. They had more than enough to convince a judge that this guy was bogus, but they needed to transfer his DNA to the box cutter. They needed the lab to make the match.”
Cabrera panned the flashlight over the murder book and started reading. After a few moments, he stopped and looked at Matt.
“They planted it,” he said in amazement. “That’s probably what set Rodriguez off. He was part of it and couldn’t handle it. He wanted to talk.”
“It’s the only explanation that works,” Matt said. “They wanted insurance to make up for the horror of the crime, the weight of the depravity. Baylor and the medical examiner had already told them what to look for.”
“They knew what to look for, so they knew what to buy.”
“That’s it,” Matt said. “They had all the DNA samples they needed from both the girl and Harris. It would’ve been easy.”
“They needed insurance,” Cabrera said. “They sweetened the pie.”
A long moment passed, and then another, swollen and bruised and all
beat up.
Matt was thinking about Ron Harris. The man deserved a lot of things, but he didn’t deserve to die the way he did. An innocent man, married with young children, stood accused of the horrific murder of his student. But Millie Brown was more than a student to him, and in the end he obviously meant more to her than anyone involved would ever admit. Matt could see it. Harris sitting through his first day in court, listening to the deputy DA lay out their case and knowing in his gut that he had no chance to clear his name. Harris knowing that he was innocent, knowing that the box cutter had been planted, knowing that he would burn. Harris feeling the panic, the terror, seeing his wife seated behind him, his parents, everything slipping away. But then there would have been all those angels from the City of Angels sitting there, too. All those faces in the gallery, all those people who wanted to see him dead. The spark of evil in their eyes. The spark of revenge and the will of the mob. Everyone watching convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’d cut up Millie Brown’s face and watched her bleed to death. They didn’t need the deputy DA to present the evidence. They already knew.
Matt pulled out of it and tried to clear his mind. Cabrera switched off the flashlight.
“Jamie Taladyne went off the grid the day after Harris killed himself, Matt.”
“You said that.”
“But he’s been loose for months. He’s out there somewhere. He’s free and he can’t help himself. He’s killing again.”
Matt rubbed his forehead as he thought it over. “You understand what’s at stake, right, Denny? We agree on what’s going on?”
Cabrera closed the murder book. “It couldn’t be more clear. Grace, Orlando, and Plank fucked up hard. They’ve murdered three cops to protect their secret.”
“They’re looking for a way out,” Matt said. “That’s all that matters now. They need Harris to take the fall for Millie Brown’s murder no matter what really happened because they planted the murder weapon. They’re cornered because of that box cutter and the fact that they’re directly responsible for an innocent man taking his own life. Everyone Taladyne’s killed since Brown—Faith Novakoff, Brooke Anderson, there could be more—every murder since, Grace has to play like the killer’s a copycat. If Grace can’t sell it, if Orlando and Plank screw it up, they know they’re dead. They know they’ll get the needle.”