Kill the Messenger

by Tami Hoag

  Pin prickles raced up Tyler’s back and down his arms and inside his belly, and he felt weak in the knees. The two detectives had one case in common that Tyler knew about: Jace.

  “. . . shooting . . .”

  “. . . screaming . . .”

  “. . . Bam! And the guy is dead on the ground. . . .”

  Tyler looked around to see if The Beast was propped up somewhere, or thrown on the ground.

  “. . . Bam! And the guy is dead. . . .”

  Tyler tried to back up a step, and banged into someone who had come up behind him. His head was swimming. He thought he was going to be sick.

  Parker was still yelling at Kyle. Kyle was yelling back at him.

  “I wasn’t firing at her! How many times do I have to tell you that?” Kyle jabbed a finger at him. “None! That’s how many times I have to tell you a goddam thing, Parker! You’re not on this case, and if I have anything to do with it, you’re not on the force.”

  “You don’t have any power over me, Bradley,” Parker barked back, leaning around the chubby cop who was still blocking him from getting to the other detective. “Nothing you could say or do could make any more impact on my life than a mouse dropping.”

  He stepped back, lifted his hands in front of him to show the guy in uniform he had no dangerous intent, then stepped around him. He leaned toward Detective Kyle and said something only the two of them could hear.

  Then Parker turned, took three steps away, and looked right at Tyler.

  44

  Parker had stayed with Abby Lowell until the EMTs loaded her into the ambulance and drove away. She would go directly to surgery. It would be hours before anyone could talk with her, and by the time she was allowed visitors, Robbery-Homicide would have total control of who went in and out of her room.

  A couple of motorcycle cops who had been dispatched to Pershing Square because of the movie shoot had taken off after Davis, who had taken off after Damon. LAPD choppers had been dispatched, and every news chopper in the city was swarming over the scene like vultures at the kill. The gridlocked traffic made it impossible for street units to join the pursuit, but that didn’t stop them from running lights and sirens.

  What a cluster fuck, Parker thought.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Parker?” Bradley Kyle, red-faced, steam coming out of his ears, said.

  “I know I declined your invitation to this little soiree,” Parker said, “but you can’t seriously be all that surprised to see me, can you, Bradley?”

  Kyle didn’t bother to deny the accusation. Another black mark against Ruiz. He looked away and called out, “Did anyone get a plate number on the cycle?”

  “It belongs to Eddie Davis,” Parker said. “Did you invite him too? Were you setting up to reenact the shootout at the OK Corral?” he asked, the sarcasm like acid in his voice. “Congratulations, Wyatt Earp, you damn near managed to kill someone. Or did you mean to hit Damon? He’s the perfect fall guy if he’s dead.”

  “I didn’t shoot anyone.”

  Parker looked around, feigning shock. “Did I miss the guy on the grassy knoll again? I didn’t fire until Davis turned and was clear. You were shooting before I was.”

  Kyle wouldn’t look at him.

  “Are you going to try to tell me the dead guy did it?” Parker asked, incredulous. “His death grip pulled the trigger and shot Abby Lowell in the back—twice?”

  Jimmy Chew stepped between them then, his back to Kyle. “Hey, fellas, let’s cool it down. One dead cop at the scene is enough, right?”

  “I wasn’t firing at her!” Kyle shouted, like an imbecile. Parker hoped the TV news crews had gotten that one on tape.

  Kyle bobbed to one side of Chew just to jab a finger at Parker. “How many times do I have to tell you that? None! That’s how many times I have to tell you a goddam thing, Parker! You’re not on this case, and if I have anything to do with it, you’re not on the force.”

  Parker laughed, the sound caustic with derision. “You don’t have any power over me, Bradley. Nothing you could say or do could make any more impact on my life than a mouse dropping.”

  He held his hands up to Jimmy Chew to say he had no violent physical intent, and took a step back and then around the officer.

  “Too bad Ruiz didn’t come to the party,” Parker said. “She could confiscate your weapon and start the IA investigation right now.”

  “Yeah?” Kyle sneered. “I hear she’s got her hands full already.”

  “She’s got nothing,” Parker said. “She’s wasting everybody’s time, including mine. I haven’t shot anybody. I’m not slinking around, Tony Giradello’s lapdog, trying to keep this fucking shell game going.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Parker.”

  “Don’t I? I know Eddie Davis is driving around in a Lincoln Town Car just like the Crowne Enterprises Town Cars. How do you think that came to be, Bradley? I know Davis and Lenny Lowell were blackmailing somebody, and I’ve got a pretty damn good idea why. How about you? What do you know about that?”

  “I know you took all the paperwork on a murder investigation and stole evidence out of Lowell’s safe-deposit box, including twenty-five-thousand dollars cash,” Kyle said. “That’s a felony.”

  “Bullshit,” Parker said. “I had a court order. The money is sealed, signed, and safe. It hasn’t made it to Property yet because I’ve been a little busy getting stabbed in the back by my partner and my captain, and trying to keep from letting Robbery-Homicide screw me over again.”

  “You’re interfering with an investigation,” Kyle said. “I could have you arrested.”

  Parker stepped into Kyle’s personal space, and smiled like a snake.

  “Go ahead, Bradley,” he said softly. “You cocksucking little weasel. Do it here, now. Every media news source in LA is watching. Have Jimmy here slap the cuffs on me, then you go over there and explain to the reporters why you had a conversation with Tony Giradello at the DA’s fund-raiser, using my name and Eddie Davis’s name in the same sentence.”

  Kyle didn’t try to deny it, or to correct him. Diane hadn’t been sure of the name, other than that it started with a D. Parker had made the jump to Damon, but that was before Eddie Davis had been identified by Obi Jones. “I don’t have to explain myself. I’m doing my job.”

  “Yeah,” Parker said. “There’s a lot of that going around.”

  Disgusted, angry, he turned and started to walk away from Kyle, looking for Kelly in the crowd, and finding the kid from the alley staring at him with big eyes. Andi Kelly was standing right behind him.

  Parker didn’t want to react. He didn’t want Bradley Kyle wondering what he was looking at.

  His eyes went from the kid to Andi, back to the kid, back to Andi. Telepathy would have been a good thing, but he hadn’t mastered it. Kelly probably thought he was having a seizure.

  “Parker!” The voice came from behind him. Kyle. “You can’t just go.”

  Parker glanced back at him. “Despite all the rumors I’ve heard about you, Bradley, you can’t have it both ways. Not with me anyway. And as you pointed out: This isn’t my case anymore.”

  “You’re a police officer. You drew and fired your weapon.”

  “Un-fucking-believable,” Parker muttered. He looked at Jimmy Chew. “Hey, Jimmy, come here.”

  Chewalski came over and Parker unholstered and handed the officer his SIG. “You’ll take that to Ballistics for the purpose of elimination in an officer-involved shooting. Let Internal Affairs know where it is.”

  “Will do, boss,” Chew said, then gave Kyle a long you’re-such-a-dick look and walked away.

  Kyle looked like a spoiled kid who had thrown a fit and now all his friends were picking up their toys and going home.

  “You’re a witness,” he said, pouting.

  “Yeah,” Parker said. “I’ll be happy to come in tomorrow and give a long and detailed report on how you shot a woman in the back.”

  Turning away fro
m Kyle, he tried to find his little friend again, but the kid had gone, and Kelly too. Parker ducked under the tape and walked away from the lights and the noise and the people. He was going back across the street to the Biltmore to sit in a civilized place and have a civilized drink.

  He exited the square, stepped onto the sidewalk, and glanced left. The city was doing some kind of work to a retaining wall along that side of the park. As with most construction projects around town, someone had seen a need to throw up a lot of plywood and make a tunnel of sorts out of the sidewalk for twenty yards or so. A canvas for graffiti taggers, and a welcome haven at night for street people and rats. The kid was standing in the mouth of the tunnel.

  Parker stopped and put his hands in his pockets and looked at the boy.

  “Funny meeting you here,” Parker said. “You get around for a kid. You don’t work for Internal Affairs, do you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What brings you here?”

  “The subway.”

  Parker gave a weary chuckle. “Everybody’s a smart-ass.” He sighed and took a couple of steps toward the tunnel. “Your mission, I meant. You’re a ways from Chinatown, and, smart kid like you, you know this isn’t a great place to be walking around after dark by yourself. Hell, I wouldn’t walk around down here by myself. Where are your parents? They let you just run all over the city?”

  “Not exactly.” The boy nibbled on his bottom lip and looked everywhere but at Parker. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to arrest me?”

  “That depends. Did you kill somebody?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are you a menace to society?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are you an enemy of the state?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then, whatever you’ve done, I’ll give you a pass,” Parker said. “Looks like I’ll be out of this job soon anyhow.”

  “I don’t like that other guy,” the boy confessed. “He’s mean. I saw him at Chen’s Fish Market this morning.”

  Parker arched a brow. “Really? And what was he doing there?”

  “Well, he came to see Madame Chen’s car, only some other cops had already taken it, which made him mad. And then he asked a bunch of questions, and was really rude.”

  “Mmm . . .” Parker leaned a little closer to confide, “I think he has self-esteem issues.”

  “He made Boo Zhu cry. Boo Zhu is de-vel-op-mentally challenged.”

  Parker loved the way the boy couldn’t quite get his little mouth around big words. The words were all in his head, his tongue just hadn’t matured as quickly as his intellect had.

  “There you go,” Parker said. “He’s probably mean to small animals too. The kind of kid who went through a lot of hamsters, if you know what I mean.”

  The kid didn’t, but he was too polite to say so. Odd little character.

  “So what is it you want to tell me that I’m not going to arrest you for?”

  The boy looked all around and up and down, looking for spies and eavesdroppers.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Parker said. “I was just on my way across the street to grab some dinner. You hungry? You want to come? The cheeseburgers are on me.”

  “I’m an ovo-lac-to vegetarian,” the kid said.

  “Of course you are. All the tofu you can eat, then. Come on.”

  The boy fell into step beside him, but just out of reach. As they waited at the corner for the light to change, Parker said, “You know, I think we should be on a first-name basis by now. How about you?”

  The sideways suspicious look.

  “I can’t figure out anything about you by just your first name,” Parker said. “You can call me Kev.”

  The light changed. Parker waited.

  The kid swallowed hard, took a big breath, let it out. “Tyler,” he said. “Tyler Damon.”

  45

  Tyler Damon gave Parker the saga of the Damon brothers, picking like a bird at a plate of pasta in Smeraldi’s. The big blue eyes periodically made passes around the room and out to the Biltmore’s Olive Street lobby, taking it all in like he’d fallen into an LA version of a Harry Potter book.

  Parker’s heart went out to him. The poor kid was terrified for his big brother, and terrified for himself. He had to feel like everything about his life was changing on a dime, and here he sat, telling it all to a cop.

  “What’s going to happen to us?” he asked miserably.

  “You’re going to be fine, Tyler,” Parker said. “We need to find your brother so he’ll be fine too. Can we make that happen?”

  The skinny shoulders went up to his ears. He stared at his plate. “He hasn’t answered any of my radio calls.”

  “He’s been pretty busy today. I have a feeling we’ll have better luck tonight.”

  “What if that guy with the motorcycle got him?”

  “The guy with the motorcycle doesn’t have the motorcycle anymore,” Parker said. “According to what I was hearing across the street, your brother was hauling ass on that bike of his. The bad guy took a dive off the Bunker Hill Steps. He should have died.”

  “But he got away?”

  “Your brother was long gone by then.” Parker tossed some bills on the table and got up. “Come on, kiddo, let’s blow this shack. You’re riding shotgun.”

  Tyler Damon’s eyes went huge. “Really?”

  “You’ve got to be my partner. This isn’t going to work without you.”

  “I have to call Madame Chen first.”

  “We’ll call her from the car. She’s not going to ground you or anything, is she?”

  The boy shook his head. “I just don’t want her to worry.”

  “We’ll call her.”

  They went out through the main lobby, where Andi Kelly was loitering. Parker raised a hand and gave the universal sign for “I’ll call you,” but didn’t pause. He needed Tyler Damon’s trust, and he wasn’t going to get it by giving his attention to other people.

  Parker’s car sat in a red zone with an LAPD pass clipped to the sun visor. They got in, the boy trying not to make a big deal of being impressed with the convertible. Parker put the top up for privacy, and because, with the sun gone, it was damn cold. He made a mental note to take the kid out in the Jag after this mess was over.

  “So,” he said, “does Jace have a girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “A boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Does he have any friends he might try to stay with?”

  “I don’t think so,” Tyler said. “He’s too busy to hang out.”

  The boy explained where he had been looking for his brother and why. Parker thought about it for a minute.

  “Do you know if he was carrying much money with him?”

  “We don’t have very much money,” the boy said.

  “Credit cards?”

  Tyler shook his head.

  It wasn’t likely Damon would have gone to a hotel anyway, Parker thought. Too confined, too many people, too much potential for trouble.

  He made a phone call to the Midnight Mission and asked a friend there if anyone matching Jace Damon’s description had come in, and to call him back if a possibility did show up.

  His next call was to Madame Chen to allay her fears that Tyler had been abducted, or worse. She asked to speak to the boy, and they conversed in Mandarin, Tyler glancing up at Parker every so often, Parker pretending not to listen. Then the boy handed the phone back to him.

  “I need Tyler to help me tonight, Madame Chen. I have to find Jace before anyone else does, and I can’t do that without Tyler.”

  Parker could tell by the quality of the silence that she didn’t like the idea.

  “I won’t let anything happen to him,” Parker promised.

  “You will bring him back tonight?”

  A question rather than an order. She was worried. Hell of a woman, Parker thought, taking these kids in literally off the street. He didn’t know a single perso
n who would have done the same, himself included.

  “I’ll bring him back as soon as I can.”

  Another silence. Her voice was strained when she spoke again. “He has school tomorrow.”

  Parker didn’t point out the incongruity of what she’d just said. She only wanted for their lives to go back to normal.

  “I’ll bring him back as soon as I can,” he said again. He wanted to tell her that he could script this and that everything would work out like a Hallmark movie, but he couldn’t.

  “Take care of him,” she said. “Take care of them both.”

  “I will,” Parker said, and ended the call.

  Tyler was watching him, watching his face, trying to read him the way he would read about Pythagoras, or figure out a math problem. It had to be frustrating for him in a way, Parker thought: having that big 168 IQ, but still being a little kid with little kid fears, and no real power over his life.

  “You got a nickname?” Parker asked.

  The boy hesitated for a minute. Like maybe he had one he didn’t want.

  “On the radio, my name is Scout,” he said, brightening. “Jace is Ranger.”

  Parker nodded. “Scout. I like that. Buckle up, Scout. Let’s ride.”

  46

  He needed to get rid of the negatives. Just get rid of them, get them to someone who didn’t want to kill him. He’d been stupid to try to get something for them, but he had wanted someone to pay for Eta. To appease his own conscience, Jace supposed.

  But no. This wasn’t about him. He’d answered a call. He’d had no ulterior motive. It hadn’t been his choice to be put in this position, just as it hadn’t been Eta’s choice. Other people had made choices with malice aforethought. He and Eta had just gotten in the way. Now he had to get out.

  The evening chill had grown more damp. He could smell the ocean in it. When he wasn’t sitting under a concrete bridge cocooned in a giant piece of Reynolds Wrap, Jace loved evenings like this. He liked to pull on a warm jacket and go up on the Chens’ roof and look at the lights. He liked the soft, diffused quality of them when the ocean mist hung in the air. Standing on that roof was one of the few times he actually liked feeling alone.