And for just a second or two, we lusted after 21 Jump Street Johnny Depp.
“So here you are again,” Syeeda said. “You, Napoleon Crase, and another seventeen-year-old girl. Another cheerleader. In this part of town.”
“Coincidence, right?”
She tossed her cigarette to the ground and smashed it with her shoe. “Einstein said, ‘Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.’”
“I have to be careful here,” I said. “Rodriguez will throw me off this case if I behave badly.”
“But you are looking at other people,” Syeeda said.
“I am but…” I twisted my lips, then said, “But Crase is an evil bastard.”
“Crase is an evil bastard, so do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor. Bring fire, bring cannons, bring big men with bigger guns. And warrants: bring plenty of those. You got this, Lou.”
The construction trailer door banged open and slammed shut.
My gaze shifted to the trailer’s porch. A balding white man wearing chinos and a burgundy polo shirt stood there with a radiophone and clipboard in his hands.
Syeeda turned to see the man, too, then said in her best David Attenborough voice, “The hawk spots the lizard. She circles high above the ground, floats on air currents before she swoops in for the kill.”
I cracked my knuckles. “The hawk is about to serve a warrant to search that trailer.”
“You’ll tell me if you find anything exciting?”
“Yep. And you’ll tell me if you hear anything that will help me solve this case?”
“Absolutely.” She opened her mouth, then popped it close. Then: “Quick question.”
“And here I am, thinking I almost escaped.”
She leaned forward and whispered, “So, are you off of them now?”
“Am I off of what?”
She smirked.
I poked the inside of my cheek with my tongue, then searched the sky. “Any day now.”
She peered at me, then said, “It’s your Spidey senses, you know. They’re tingling and warning you not to procreate with this man.”
“This man has been my husband for eleven years,” I said with a twisted grin. “Not that you would know anything about being in a committed relationship.”
“True,” she said, unflinching, “but we’re not talking about me. I’ll say it again: having a baby to save your marriage is like a sailor fixing that rip on the Titanic with needle and thread.”
I pulled my fingers through my hair and forced a smile to my lips. “Doomed, am I?”
She stared at me, then said, “You’re the one trying to conceive on the Pill.”
“Oh, Sy. Stop bein’ an old lady, will ya?” I bowed at my waist, wilting beneath her hard eyes. “Now if you will excuse me. I have to see a man about a horse.”
After promises of drinks to catch each other up on men issues, I strode toward the bald man and the trailer. Syeeda’s eyes burned my back—the hawk was being watched by a falcon.
20
Heavy machinery roared and grumbled, and hot tar made the air sticky with stink. Somewhere, a truck was backing up and its beeping … beeping … beeping made me want to scream. But the smell of fried meat wafted from the bright yellow and green roach coach parked on the street—those fragrant tendrils of smoke twisted up my nose, to my brain, and Mickey-Finned my jangled nerves. I hadn’t eaten since the crack of dawn and my stomach growled just as it had when I stood here eighteen hours ago.
I clipped my badge to my jacket’s breast pocket and slipped my aviators back over my eyes. Then I called Colin on the Motorola. “I’m on my way to the trailer. Get over here as soon as possible.”
He said, “Copy that.”
As soon as that call ended, another call came in—it was Dispatch with Macie Darson holding on the line to talk to me.
“Detective Norton?”
“Hey, Macie. How are you?”
The young woman laughed weakly. “I think the shock’s starting to wear off but … I’m okay, I guess.” She took a sharp breath, then slowly exhaled. “When you have a chance, could we meet to talk again? I may have more information that will help my sister’s case.”
I clamped a hand over my free ear to block the sounds of growling earth-movers. “Of course. When?”
“Tomorrow morning? Like around ten or eleven? At the Ladera Starbucks.” After I agreed to the time and place, she thanked me for doing everything I could to help her family. The sound of a dial tone told me she had hung up.
Poor girl. No one expected to deal with murder on a Thursday morning.
The weak sun beat down on me even though it hadn’t hit seventy degrees yet. But the beads of sweat that rolled down the middle of my back and were being half-assedly absorbed by my already soggy bra? Yeah, those beads could give a damn about highs and lows.
I ignored shouted questions from the TV reporters and strode toward the construction trailer. Workers in hard hats and grimy jeans paused in their step as I passed. One of them said, “The LAPD hiring like that now?” His buddy added, “I need to serve and protect, cuz damn.”
But the bald man in the burgundy polo, the one standing where I needed to go, threw an irritated glance in my direction. He clomped down the steps and headed west and to the ongoing construction of the back condos.
“Excuse me, sir,” I called out to him. “I’m Detective Elouise Norton and—”
“I don’t know anything,” he said, frowning. His voice was rough, as though he’d found it soaking in a vat of cement.
I offered him the smile I’d give an IRS auditor. Cold but polite. “First of all, I didn’t ask you anything. Second, what’s your name? I didn’t catch it.”
He gave me the up-and-down. “I didn’t throw it.”
My smile dropped. “Give me your name unless you wanna give it to me at the station, ass-hat.” Then I came to stand up against him—I had a good three inches on this guy. And even though I had only attended two Krav Maga classes in the last month, I still had more muscle than this soggy tomato in chinos.
Aware now that I could kick his ass, the man took a step back and cleared his throat. “Hank La Garza.”
I scribbled the jackass’s name into my pad.
He tried to smile but was too nervous, and his smile was more of a grimace. “It’s just that we’re behind schedule, Detective, and—”
“A girl was murdered on this site, Mr. La Garza, so right now, I could care less about schedules. My job is to figure out who killed her.”
“You don’t understand the pressure I’m under,” he said, shaking his head, offering me that pitiful grin. “You don’t understand the significance of this place.”
I snorted and narrowed my eyes. “Am I going too fast here? Am I, like, speaking Farsi or something? Mr. Garza, a girl was found murdered on this property.”
“All the back and forth,” he rambled, still not listening. “The residents wanted the Plaza restored and then they didn’t want it. No Walmart in our neighborhood, they shouted, but now you can’t even walk into the store cuz it’s so damn crowded. We don’t need any more bad press, Detective.”
“That’s why it’s important to find out who killed this girl,” I said with great patience, “before the goodwill of the community turns and your boss is seen as a money-grubbing leech who cares more about timetables than seeking justice for a dead, seventeen-year-old valedictorian and future veterinarian.”
Hank ran his hand over his bald head and muttered, “Crap.” He pulled a pack of Camels from his pocket and slid out a cigarette. “Feels like I’m in an episode of CSI.”
My blood pressure jumped at the mention of that show, but hey, go with it. I pointed to the trailer. “I need to peek in there real quick.”
He furrowed his eyebrows. “Why? The trailer was locked up on Tuesday night.”
“Are you the only one with a key?”
He nodded and his hands shook as he lit the cigarette.
“So what goes on i
n there?”
He took a drag and the nicotine made the muscles in his face relax. He lazily blew smoke into the air, then said, “Payroll, administrative stuff, scheduling. I have a secretary—Beverly Leman—who comes in three times a week.”
Colin was ambling up the sidewalk toward Hank and me. More muscle.
“Still,” I said with a let’s-be-reasonable smile, “I need to see. To quiet the niggling in my brain. Cuz in CSI episodes…” I waited, hoping that he’d fill in the ellipses.
He nodded eagerly. “Evidence can be found everywhere. There was this one episode where a pigeon stole a dead man’s ear. And they found the ear in North Vegas even though—”
“Are you stalling me, Hank?” I asked. “Do you have something to hide?”
“No, of course not.” His eyes shifted back and forth as he took another nervous drag. “Shouldn’t you have a warrant?”
I snapped my fingers. “Oh, yeah.” I plucked the warrant from my file, and said, “Thanks for reminding me.”
Hank slumped, and his neck and face turned red—he really was a soggy tomato.
Colin, now at my side, introduced himself to the project manager.
“So,” I said, “shall we go inside?”
“Guess so.” Hank tossed the half-smoked Camel to the ground.
Both Colin and I considered that cigarette sitting there, just waiting to be picked up and placed in an evidence envelope.
If nothing else, CSI had taught the world that DNA could be found anywhere—especially on the filter of a smoldering cigarette.
21
Hank La Garza stayed outside—he had been pulled into an argument between a painter and a carpenter. Colin and I would not wait for him. We pulled on our latex gloves and clicked on our flashlights. Then, I opened the trailer’s door.
A pretty blonde with long, crinkly hair and longer red fingernails was typing on a computer at a cheap desk.
A calendar of motivational sayings—If not us, who? If not now, when?—was tacked on the wall.
A water cooler rumbled in the corner, making the steel office-supplies cabinet vibrate.
At first glance, this construction trailer resembled every construction trailer on every construction site in the world, and a small part of me said, “Don’t waste too much time here.” But that part of me was wrong.
You can’t ignore the smell of bleach.
Or the smell of death.
Colin whispered, “He did her here.”
“Yep.” My eyes skipped from the pot of African violets on the secretary’s desk to the cheap green carpet that covered the trailer’s floor.
Someone had used a tub of bleach to clean up whatever bad thing that had happened here.
I wandered over to the desk and stood over the secretary. “You are…?”
She fluttered her clumpy eyelashes at Colin, then said, “Beverly Leman.” She was a dainty teacup up top but an old country milking bucket around her hips and thighs. The seams of her rayon skirt were thirty minutes from liberating those thighs from rayon oppression, and I’m sure the boys around the construction zone wouldn’t have minded that one bit.
“Ms. Leman,” I said, “does the trailer always smell like this?”
She flicked a look at me, then returned her gaze to Colin. “Not this bad. But you know: this ain’t the Ritz Carlton.”
“True. Ms. Leman, could you step outside, please?”
She didn’t say a word, nor did she click the mouse to save her document. In silence, she grabbed her purse from the desk drawer, offered Colin a sexy hair toss, then brushed against him as she wiggled past.
I sniffed—there was another smell on top of the bleach. I closed my eyes as though I stood in a Napa winery, sniffing a glass of very complicated merlot.
“Vomit,” Colin whispered in my ear.
“You sure know how to turn a girl on,” I said, opening my eyes.
“Just call me the Love Doctor.”
“Just do your job, please.”
This time Colin directed his attention to the ground. Atta boy.
“Lookie-lookie.” He was pointing at a white circle the size of a quarter. Then, he pointed at a smaller circle the size of a dime, and then to an even tinier spot no bigger than a corn kernel.
I stooped to examine the marks but froze—the base of the desk had been bashed in, and that bashing thing had left behind a concave circle of splintered wood. The back of Monique’s head?
Behind me, Colin said, “Whoa!”
I turned to my partner—he was now crouched before a file cabinet near the watercooler. “What’s ‘whoa’?” I asked.
“Gimme a picture of Monique’s hand,” he said.
I rifled though the expandable file, found a photograph, and handed it to him. “What is it?”
He moved aside so that I could see.
A yellow acrylic fingernail was trapped behind the file cabinet. And this nail hadn’t been cut but had popped off.
Colin peered at me, his blue eyes sparkling with excitement. He grabbed his Motorola from his belt, and said, “Zucca, you there?”
After a few squawks, Zucca said, “Yep. What’s goin’ on?”
“We found the primary scene.”
I tore my gaze from the fingernail and glanced at the side of the file cabinet. “Holy guacamole,” I muttered.
On the gray metal were dried blood drops with upward-moving tails.
I rushed out of the trailer and hailed two patrol officers who kept people from entering the condo.
In less than a minute, those same cops had wrapped the trailer with yellow tape.
A crowd formed, then—construction workers holding greasy Fatburger and Taco Bell bags in one hand, and camera phones held high in the other.
As I waited for Zucca on the trailer’s porch, I called Luke and Pepe back at the station and told them to drop whatever they were doing and come over to the condo. Colin searched for Beverly Leman to take her statement and to get a set of her fingerprints we’d use to compare against any we’d find in the trailer.
Syeeda was standing at her car, scribbling into a notebook, looking at me, then scribbling again.
The monster who had caused this racket was watching me, too. I felt his spotlight burn on the nape of my neck like dragon’s breath. I took in every face in the crowd as well as gazed at the windows of surrounding office buildings and the fancy houses on the hill.
Zucca materialized before me as though he had found a wormhole that connected unit 1B to the trailer. “What’s this about a fingernail?”
“Right this way.”
He followed me into the trailer. I didn’t even have a chance to explain before he sniffed the air. “Whoa.”
“That’s what they all say,” I deadpanned.
Zucca scanned the carpet. In his mind he was already dropping yellow tents near splotches and splatters, banged-in desks and abandoned fingernails.
“Look for hair in the wood of that desk,” I instructed.
Colin was popping up the stairs as I was leaving the trailer. He held up a set of fingerprint cards and said, “I got—”
“Where is Hank La Garza?” I asked, brushing past him.
Colin pointed to the yellow-and-green roach coach—Tito O’Mulligan’s Mexican & Irish Cuisine. Hank was sipping from a large Styrofoam cup and laughing with a sunburned man in an orange shirt and yellow hard hat. Laughing as though shit was all good, as though a seventeen-year-old girl had been found dead at a construction site in Norway and not ten yards from where he stood.
“What the hell is so funny?” I muttered as I stomped toward the food truck.
Colin followed behind me. “Is my line ‘Calm down, Lou, don’t do anything stupid’?” He waved over the six-foot-five, Aryan-big patrol cop who had wrapped the trailer in tape.
“I won’t do anything stupid,” I snarled. “I’m just gonna go Duke Nukem on his ass.”
I reached Tito O’Mulligan’s just as the fry cook handed Hank his hamburger.
<
br /> And I promptly slapped that burger out of Hank’s hand.
Someone in the crowd shouted, “Excessive force!”
Hank glowered at his fallen meal. “What the—?”
“You need to go with this officer right now,” I instructed, pointing to the big cop. All eyes were on me—including Syeeda’s and a few left-behind TV reporters. A camera phone was probably recording this confrontation right now, and if I didn’t cool down, I’d be on YouTube by three o’clock.
Hank paled. “Why? I didn’t—”
I smacked the Styrofoam cup out of his hand and the chances of picking up that burger, kissing it up to God, and claiming the three-second rule was washed away in orange Fanta.
“Let’s go,” I growled. “Now.”
Hank squared his shoulders. “I have rights.”
The giant patrol cop who hadn’t smiled since Cheers went off the air stepped toward him.
“You want rights?” I asked. “Fine. I wasn’t arresting you, but okay, I’ll read you your rights. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney—”
“Stop.” Hank lifted his hands in surrender. “All right. I have nothing to hide. I haven’t done anything.”
“Then this won’t take long,” I said. “See you soon.”
22
Interview room 1 stank of flop sweat from a Hoover Crip who had been questioned in a drive-by shooting that had killed a pastor’s wife and her six-month-old fetus. It was a soundproof room that typically ran very hot or very cold, making our guests crazy uncomfortable and willing to talk just to get the hell out. Five minutes into the interview, Hank La Garza had melted through his burgundy polo. His sweaty bald head and wet eyes glistened like reflecting pools as he pleaded with me to believe him. He had sworn that he had never done anything wrong, okay, maybe once or twice he had cheated on his wife, and sure, he tended to do California rolls at stop signs, and all right, he had operated a vehicle while under the influence a few times. But! He attended Mass every Sunday and foster-parented a black kid named Jamaal, and so he could never kill anybody, especially a child.
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