by M. Z. Kelly
THREE
“The coroner is arriving,” Leo said, as he joined me on the patio and my thoughts surfaced.
I looked up, trying to forget my earlier encounter with Harlee Ryland and focus on the task at hand. “Don’t tell me it’s Mumford.”
Earl Mumford was a deputy coroner who had worked most of our recent cases. He was an arrogant jerk who offered little in the way of help while working a crime scene.
Leo smiled. “Name’s Randolph, a new guy.” He regarded me for a moment. “You seem a little...distracted. Everything okay?”
I sighed, deciding to wait on telling him about my earlier encounter until I came to terms with what Harlee Ryland had said. “Yeah. It’s just that...” I took a breath. “...it’s hard to believe Mel is gone.”
He rubbed his jaw, looked over at the body through the open patio doors. “Life’s never fair or what you expect.”
Olivia waved us back into the residence, then asked Leo, “Did the neighbor see anything?”
He shook his head. “Just a car that was parked up the street. She didn’t get a model or a plate.”
“When Hall and Horton get here, let’s have them canvass the neighborhood.”
The new deputy coroner came over, offering his hand and introducing himself. “Larry Randolph.” After introductions, he asked Olivia, “What do we know about the victim?”
“One of our own,” Olivia said. “Detective Mel Peters. A couple rounds to the chest. It looks like the intruder came in through the patio. The murder weapon is still by the body, so we’re just getting started.”
“I just talked to an SID technician,” I told them, referencing the department’s Scientific Investigation Division. “He said the grass in the side yard looks trampled down, so maybe someone came in through there. We’ll need to take a look.”
After Olivia acknowledged what I said, Randolph put on a pair of latex gloves and said, “I’ll take a look at the body.”
As we walked away, Olivia said to me, “They must have a Coroner 101 class at Hollywood High. He doesn’t look old enough to shave.”
I agreed. Randolph was tall and gangly, with a shock of brown hair, and blue eyes. He was handsome, for someone who had just reached puberty. His youth and good looks made me think about my friend, Brie Henner. She was a coroner who I’d worked with for a couple years and had become my friend. She was suffering from Stage Four metastatic breast cancer and had recently moved back east to live with her mother. Brie was dying, and it was another in a series of losses that seemed to make death my constant companion.
I had Olivia and Leo join me in the back yard. I used my flashlight to show them where the grass looked like it might have been walked on. We didn’t see anything in the way of prints or other evidence.
“My guess is it was one person,” Leo said, after checking the area. “The side gate’s unlocked.”
I decided to tell him and Olivia what had been on my mind. “It doesn’t add up that Mel would have left the patio door unlocked. She was receiving threats from Dunbar, or someone associated with him. That would have made her extra cautious.”
“Are you thinking it was someone she knew?” Leo asked.
I took a breath. “That was my initial thought, but, if that was the case, it doesn’t make sense that he would come in through the side yard.”
As we all headed back into the house, the crime scene technician I’d talked to earlier stopped us. “I’ve found some prints on the door. We’ll run them through the databases, see if they belong to our victim or someone else.”
We thanked him and headed back inside at the same time a woman came rushing into the house through the front door. Leo went over to assist one of the uniformed officers who was trying to restrain the hysterical woman.
I stopped and had to hold onto the back of a kitchen barstool. The lights above me seemed to dim as my mind reeled. The images of Harlee Ryland suddenly came flooding back to me again.
FOUR
“What are you talking about?” I’d demanded when Harlee had said we were related.
Her superior smile was still there. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you?”
I shook my head and clutched my sides, still feeling the impact of what she’d said.
She raised her weapon and pointed it at my face. “Maybe it’s better that you die not knowing the truth. You can go to your grave with the mystery of it all.”
Her finger tensed on the trigger at the same time her phone rang. She glanced at the screen, still holding the gun on me. “Don’t move.”
She answered the call, not saying anything, as she listened to the caller. Almost a full minute went by before she responded, finally saying, “Are you sure that’s the way you want to play this?” After listening to the response, she ended the call and put the phone away.
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
“You’ve been pardoned, for now.” She stood and headed for the door.
“Stop!” I yelled. “What did you mean when you said that we’re related?”
Her smile was even broader than before as she turned back to me. “What did I just say about mysteries?” She headed for the door again.
“Is your grandfather my father?” I said, calling out as she opened the door.
She moved through the open door with a burst of laughter. Just before leaving, she said, “Maybe you should just think of me as family.”
FIVE
Images of my earlier encounter with Harlee Ryland receded, and I became aware of my surroundings again. I took a moment, regaining control and steadying myself. After my confrontation with Ryland, I’d made calls to both Olivia and Joe Dawson, filling them both in on what happened, since Harlee was a wanted fugitive. They’d both reported the incident up the chain of command.
As I went into the living room, I learned that the distraught woman Leo was helping restrain was Mel Peters’ sister, Marilyn. After Leo managed to calm her down, she suddenly became agitated again and demanded to see her sister’s body. We had no choice but to physically remove her from the residence. We tried questioning her several times, but she was incoherent. Olivia finally made the decision to call an ambulance when Peters slumped to the ground in despair and became unresponsive.
After Mel’s sister was taken away, Darby Hall and Woody Horton arrived. We took some time, going through each room in the house before Darby told us he found something of interest in the home office.
“It looks like our detective was engaged in some extracurricular activities,” Darby said. At his request, we had all gathered around our victim’s laptop.
The little detective had a smirk on his face as he clicked through the browsing history and told us what he’d found. “Misters for Sisters, Knights for the Night, and Dreams, Desires, and Damn He’s Hot. They’re all male escort dating sites, also known as online prostitution.”
“Are you kidding?” I said, still trying to forget my earlier encounter with Harlee Ryland. “I knew Mel pretty well, and she never even mentioned dating anyone.”
Darby’s smirk widened. “We’ve all got secrets, Sexton. I’ve heard you’ve got a few skeletons in your own closet.”
“What’s that supposed...?”
Olivia interrupted, glaring at the little detective. “I’m only going to say this one more time. We leave personal issues out of our discussion of cases.”
Darby took a breath and looked away, but otherwise didn’t respond. The lieutenant had warned him about making snarky comments on previous cases we’d worked.
“What about Mel’s emails and texts?” Leo asked. “Any indication she was actually following through and meeting up with these contacts?”
Darby nodded. “There’s a shit...I mean, lots of stuff back and forth. She hooked up about once a week on the average, always with different men. I need to dig deeper, but it could even be that one of these guys was blackmailing her.”
Woody had entered the room in the middle of the discussion and was standing
next to his much older partner. His youthful looks and blond hair always made me think of someone who belonged on the beach rather than working homicide. He asked Darby, “What makes you think blackmail was involved?”
“Just speculation at this point, but...” Darby shrugged. “You’ve got a cop with a reputation to maintain, she hooks up with a bunch of online scum, and who knows? Maybe one of these guys saw a payday.”
Leo glanced at Woody and rolled his dark eyes. “I think that’s one hell of a stretch.”
“Let’s go through all the websites, emails, and texts,” Olivia said to Darby. “You can use Jenny and Molly to catalog everything. Let us know what you come up with.”
Jenny and Molly were crime analysts assigned to Section One. I had a lot more faith in them reviewing the browsing history and communications than I did in Darby.
While Darby continued to work in the home office, the rest of us went back to the crime scene. We saw that Kathy Maitland, a supervisor with SID, had arrived and was chatting with her investigators. After a couple minutes, she came over to us.
“Just from a preliminary look at things, I think our victim might have heard something or someone on the patio, opened the doors to take a look, and was attacked. Her prints look like the only ones on the door.”
“But she didn’t have her service weapon with her,” I said. “It was still in her purse, meaning she likely recognized the intruder.”
“Maybe,” Olivia said. “Unless she heard a noise and went outside without thinking she was in danger.”
“I think we need to follow up on the threats she was receiving. That includes talking to Dunbar and getting his alibi.”
“He’ll no doubt have one that’s airtight.”
“There’s some other findings,” Kathy said. “Dr. Randolph can speak to those.”
The youthful deputy coroner must have been listening to our conversation. He removed his gloves and came over to us. “It looks like there were two separate entry wounds, as you suspected, one that severed the left subclavian artery. That round was the likely cause of death. I’ll have more details when we do the autopsy.”
“Defensive wounds?” Olivia asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing. I doubt that she had time to resist.” Randolph glanced over at the body. “Do we know anything about her medical history?”
I answered, since I knew Mel best. “Not really, but, as far as I know, she was in good health. She never mentioned anything to the contrary.”
Randolph nodded, brushed his bangs off his forehead. “Interesting. She’s got several injection sites on her left antecubital fossa.”
“You mean drug injection sites?” Olivia asked.
Randolph nodded. “It could indicate some recent sites where blood was drawn or drugs were administered, unless...”
“Mel wasn’t a drug user,” I said.
“We’ll need to get her complete medical history. Do you know if she’d been dieting recently?”
“Not that I’m aware of, but, now that you mention it, she did look a little thinner lately.”
“There appears to be some jaundice. The weight loss might indicate she’d been dieting, but you never know.”
While I didn’t suspect Mel had used drugs, I knew what Randolph was suggesting couldn’t be ruled out. I’d known too many well-educated, seemingly stable people, and even cops, who had succumbed to drug use. I also knew that Mel was under duress from the threats made to her. That alone might have been enough to cause her to use drugs, especially if it was a previous coping mechanism.
We spent most of the night at the crime scene, not finishing up until after three in the morning. Afterward, I agreed to meet Olivia and Leo at a nearby Denny’s for an early breakfast. While Olivia had already notified the captain and deputy chief about my earlier encounter with Harlee Ryland, I wanted to give her a few more details and fill in Leo.
After placing our orders and the waitress filled our coffee cups, I went over everything that had happened with Harlee, adding, “She said something about her grandfather showing her pictures of me over the years, but said that she never suspected anything. I asked her what she meant by that.” I sighed. “She told me that she and I are related.”
Olivia and Leo exchanged glances. “Did she say exactly what that means?” Leo asked.
I shook my head. “She got a phone call and, after talking to someone, she said I’d been pardoned, for now. Before leaving, she also said something about everything being a mystery. I asked her if Harlan Ryland was my father. She laughed and said that maybe I should just think of her as family.” I picked up my coffee cup, but set it down without drinking. “I guess that pretty much seals the deal about Ryland being my biological father.”
Olivia and Leo didn’t respond right away, probably unsure about what to say. Leo finally said, “Whatever the truth is, there’s still a hell of a lot of blanks to fill in.”
Olivia agreed, asking him, “Any word from Pearl?”
Leo shook his head but tried to be encouraging, maybe for my benefit. “Nothing, but I think he’ll eventually surface and give us a lot of answers. If you ask me, everything that happened with Kate’s biological and adoptive fathers goes back to Brazil, and their import of drugs through the movie studios.”
I took a bite of my muffin, but had no appetite. “There’s also the little matter of Woody finding out that my adoptive dad might have been part of their drug trade, not to mention his offshore bank account.”
Woody Horton had been assigned to my adoptive father’s homicide case when it had recently been reopened, after the department had refused to relook at it for years. He’d talked to Jerry Steinman, a longtime employee of Wallace Studios, where my father did security work. Steinman had said that he’d heard my father and Ryan Cooper arguing shortly before my dad was murdered. He thought that my dad had wanted a bigger cut of the drug money and that Cooper and the others were cutting him out—permanently.
I’d recently had a repressed memory surface about my father giving me some papers shortly before his death. A few days earlier, I’d found the papers in my childhood bedroom. They contained a series of numbers that were tied to a safe deposit box. Natalie and Mo had tracked down the contents of the box, revealing that it contained information about a possible secret offshore bank account.
“Any success in finding the bank account?” Leo asked.
I shook my head. “Joe Dawson has his people working on it, but, so far, no luck.” I picked at my muffin again. “Besides, if it is drug money, I don’t want any part of it.”
Olivia tried to comfort me. “I don’t think you should jump to conclusions, either about your biological father or the offshore account. Give it some time.”
I nodded. “I guess I don’t have any other choice.”
SIX
I got home just before dawn and tripped over a moving box in my bedroom.
“Shit!” I screamed, grabbing my foot and sitting on the edge of my bed. Bernie came over and whined in sympathy. After watching me rub my foot for a minute, he apparently decided I would survive and trotted off to bed.
My friends and I were in the process of packing to move into the Craven House in the Mount Olympus neighborhood of Hollywood. Our new digs had been the childhood home of Bobby Craven, who went on a murderous rampage when he was a teenager, killing his entire family. Over the years, there had been lots of rumors about the place being haunted.
The house was currently used on a part-time basis by the movie studios, but Natalie and Mo had worked a deal for us to live there for reduced rent while they did security work for the productions. Due to my work schedule, I still hadn’t seen the place, but had agreed to the move only because we had no other options. I could only hope the place was livable.
Just the thought of moving left me feeling exhausted as I collapsed into bed. I immediately fell asleep and didn’t wake up until after ten when I heard someone screaming.
I stumbled out of bed and looked out the wi
ndow, seeing that Natalie and Mo were with Natalie’s boyfriend Tex and his friend Howie. I realized they were in a heated argument with Hermes Krump, the lawyer for the mobile home park. We’d recently been evicted from our homes for, in the words of the residents’ council, creating a public nuisance. The truth was, Tex and Howie had short-circuited the power system in the park during one of their failed experiments.
Tex was a genius, with a penchant for experimenting on everything from power grids to virtual reality. The only problem being, he was completely deficient in common sense. His friend Howie suffered from multiple personality disorder, something that he demonstrated when I opened the door to find out who was screaming.
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
“What we have here is a failure to communicate,” Howie said, in a voice that I thought might be an attempt to imitate an actor from some old movie.
Howie Cromwell was in his twenties and handsome. He had longish brown hair and pale blue eyes with thick dark lashes. In another lifetime he could be a rock star, but in this life he’d chosen another occupation: idiot. When he spoke, he shuffled from one strange personality to another, like he was playing a multiple personality deck of cards. His repertoire of personalities seemed endless. This morning he looked like a madman as he lectured the mobile home park’s lawyer.
“Do you know what they call a lawyer with an IQ of sixty in Washington?” Howie didn’t wait for an answer. “Senator.”
Tex agreed with what his companion said, telling Krump, “Perhaps you should go back to the Walmart School of Law for a refresher course in legal issues.” Natalie’s boyfriend had a bushel of dark curly hair that stood on end. Albert Einstein’s insane son came to mind as he went on. “You might even consider starting with their Sleazeball 101 course.”
Natalie and Mo shouted their encouragement as Krump turned red and raised his voice. “The law is clear on this matter.” He looked at me. “Your eviction is retroactive to the date of your infraction.” He handed me a sheath of legal documents. “You have forty-eight hours to vacate these premises.”