The noise from the bar was a dull throb with an undercurrent of lively pop rock. If she were tired enough, she could easily fall to sleep to the comfortable rhythms of drinking and fun; tonight, though beat, she was still tense from the day. Her studio consisted of a small kitchen against the back wall and two doors on the right—they led to the closet and the closet-sized bathroom. The living area was covered with indoor-outdoor carpet and boasted a couch (courtesy of Krista—an extra from her grandmother’s estate), a bed and a decent television. She did most of her non-field work at the over-sized kitchen table and she would’ve been perfectly happy working out of her apartment. But Krista was right—clients tended to think better of private investigators who actually had a real office with desks and a water cooler and doors that offered privacy.
She took her beer and pizza with her onto her deck and sat back on the hammock. She caught the final dip of the sun and the tension of the day disappeared with it. She didn’t care what her tiny apartment looked like; she could easily live here out here forever. She’d even arranged her television so she could pivot it to watch baseball from her deck.
Her fifteen minutes of bliss, flipping through the stations and finishing her pizza, ended when the music downstairs abruptly cut off and she heard shouts. Dammit, a bar fight. Why did this always happen when Isaac was on duty? Sure, Scarlet kinda liked him and understood the problem of getting a job as an ex-con, but his temper was going to get Diego in trouble.
She ran downstairs and quickly assessed the situation. Heather was standing next to the jukebox—she’d pulled the plug, which was the signal for Scarlet to haul ass. Isaac was standing behind the bar, not moving a muscle, while one of the college boys from earlier was yelling at him. She glanced around—the others were gone.
Isaac hated bullies. He was protective of the women in the bar and on occasion he overreacted—or stuck his nose in other people’s domestic problems. While Scarlet did her best to avoid domestic situations that had been the bane of her existence on the job, Isaac seemed to thrive on helping damsels in distress.
It was going to get him tossed back in prison, or killed. Why Scarlet cared, she didn’t know.
Scarlet strode over to the bar while the jerk was shouting, “What, you going to try to kill me, too? One punch, I’ll call the cops and you’ll be back in prison so fast. You had no right—”
Scarlet didn’t have time to wonder how the jerk knew Isaac was an ex-con. She maneuvered between the on-lookers who were more excited than scared, and said, “Back off.”
The College Casanova was well over six feet tall and towered over her five foot seven stature. But height didn’t matter as much as attitude. He took one small step back, but it was enough for Scarlet to step between him and the bar. “You’re out of here,” she told Casanova.
“I’ll sue. Shut this place down. You’ll all be out of work. Maybe I’ll buy it myself, have a real fun spot.” He made a crude motion with his hands and Isaac jumped over the the bar.
If Scarlet hadn’t sidestepped so she stood between the two men, Isaac would have decked Casanova. “Go,” she ordered the kid, staring him in the eye.
Isaac was right at her back, but he stopped. She could feel his breath on her neck, hot and full of rage, the tension radiating off him so thick she suspected she wouldn’t be able to stop him if he really wanted to take down this guy.
“This isn’t over,” Casanova said.
Isaac said, “Never come back.”
“I’ll do whatever the fuck I want.”
Scarlet feared he’d push it, but Casanova left. She hadn’t noticed that two of his college buddies were also there. They’d stayed in the background, but now followed him out. The girls and other two guys weren’t around at all.
Isaac turned and walked down the hall to Diego’s office. Heather plugged back in the jukebox. And now Scarlet was stuck as bartender. How the hell did that happen?
She motioned Heather over. Heather said, “Remember those drink coasters you gave Diego a couple months ago? That test for date rape drugs?”
Heather didn’t have to finish. Scarlet could picture the scene. She said, “Isaac used them.”
Heather shook her head. “I did. I thought I saw that guy, the one yelling at Isaac, slip something into the brunette’s beer, and so I brought over a fresh round and tested the rest of her drink. Then I made the mistake of telling Isaac. He went over and told the girls they were being drugged. I should have told you instead. I just thought we should call the police, or cut them off or something.”
“Isaac told the girls?”
“Yeah. They stormed out with two of the guys. There were some words between them, but I couldn’t hear. And then that one just let loose on Isaac and Isaac cut him off. I pulled the jukebox when I saw it getting dicey.”
“You did good, Heather. Don’t worry about it.”
Within ten minutes, the bar was back to normal, and then Isaac returned. Scarlet finished ringing up a tab, then said, “Next time—”
“I know. Go.”
“No, you don’t. You may no longer be on parole, Isaac, but there are cops out there who think once a con, always a con. Diego took a risk hiring you.”
“I don’t need a lecture from an ex-cop,” Isaac said. Then he pushed it. “Don’t you even care that they planned to rape those girls?”
“I do, but—”
“But they deserve it? Because they’re stupid?”
“I didn’t say that—”
“I know how you think, Moreno. I had to do something.”
“You don’t know how I think, and you don’t know me, so back off.” When had this turned around to be about her? “Maybe if you’d called the cops, they could’ve searched the boys for drugs. There are ways to get the same result without resorting to fists. And maybe they would have been sitting tonight in jail rather than on the street looking for two more girls to drug.”
“Right. Because the system always works.” Isaac glared at her, then walked away to serve a patron. Scarlet ran her hands through her choppy brown hair and wanted to scream. Isaac was more frustrating than anyone else she knew. Why did she always let him drag her into these lose-lose arguments? She got him, but it’s like he wanted her to agree that the system was fucked and that the only way to get justice was his way.
Only, she didn’t know what his way was. He’d been in prison for four years and was lucky to get off so easily. Had his time behind bars made him more hardened?
Scarlet kept an eye on the bar a bit longer before heading back upstairs to her hammock and a movie. North by Northwest, one of her favorites. She didn’t think she’d be able to sleep because of the confrontation and subsequent adrenaline, but found herself drifting off under the stars, dreaming about scaling Mount Rushmore with a hot guy, a cross between Cary Grant and Channing Tatum.
Chapter Three
The sound of a gunshot snapped Scarlet out of a deep sleep.
Before she was fully awake or cognizant of the time, she rolled out of her hammock and retrieved her gun from the drawer in her kitchen.
She didn’t debate whether it was a gunshot or not—it definitely was a gunshot. And it was close, within a couple blocks.
Then the silence registered—no music except the methodic choir of ocean waves a block away, no noise in the bar. She glanced at her watch—2:10. In the morning. Depending on the crowd, Isaac would’ve had last call between one and one-thirty.
She went downstairs to make sure the bar was secure. It was, and the alarm was on.
She went back upstairs and called 911 to report the gunshot. She identified herself, informed the dispatcher she was a former police detective and was pretty certain the shot came from between her location and the Newport Pier, which was several blocks away.
She hesitated for only a moment before scaling down the backside of her apartment so she wouldn’t have to deal with Diego’s alarm system. There were strategically placed footholds not obvious at first glance. She’d once
teased Diego that his alarm system sucked because anyone could come in through her apartment. He deadpanned her and said, “But you’d shoot them before they got to my safe.”
Scarlet wasn’t particularly looking for anyone, but she wanted to make sure Diego’s property was safe, that the shot wasn’t closer than she thought or maybe Isaac had been killed leaving. Meth heads wouldn’t know Isaac didn’t carry cash from the bar at night, and gang bangers looking for trouble would definitely get it with Isaac. She’d never seen Isaac with a gun, but that didn’t mean he didn’t carry.
The alley was clear, Isaac’s motorcycle wasn’t around, and she didn’t see anyone on the street. She planned to wait for the patrol officer, then a woman’s scream pierced the night. A deep barking followed—the sound of a very large dog. It came from a block away, near the beach.
Scarlet ran toward the scream, cutting across the main street from the bar, and down a side street that led to the beach. The houses here were all close together, small with little to no yard because people who lived on the peninsula in Newport stayed because of the beach, not the living space. Half the places were vacation rentals, and most of the crime was vandalism, drunk and disorderly, and theft.
A high-pitched yap-yap dog barked in one of the houses as Scarlet passed, and a few people came out of their houses in response to the scream. A woman jogged around the corner from the bike path and nearly ran into Scarlet. She was half-dragging a yellow Labrador retriever.
“Are you all right?” Scarlet asked, half expecting someone to be chasing her.
“There’s—someone—I think he’s dead.” She whispered the last word, her breath a mere gasp. “He’s right on the beach—maybe I should’ve checked if he was still alive?” She bit her lip. “I should’ve called 911, but I didn’t want to stay there.”
“Where do you live?”
She pointed to a small cottage mid-way up the block. “I’m renting it for the week.”
“I’ll call 911. Stay inside. The police will want to talk to you.”
There were already sirens in the air, and Scarlet watched as the witness went into her cottage. She then ran toward where the witness had seen the body while she pulled out her phone.
She dialed 911 and the phone kept ringing. Likely several neighbors had called in either the gunshot or the scream. She continued around the corner and looked up and down the beach. She saw the body halfway between the bike path and a lifeguard tower. She hesitated only a minute, debating whether to check for signs of life and fearing she’d contaminate evidence. But the witness and her dog had already trampled the scene, and if the victim was still alive, every minute counted.
She removed her flashlight from her pocket, forgetting that she must have grabbed it with her gun. Force of habit. She spotted the Labrador’s paw prints in the sand and stayed with them until she reached the body. Male, dark hair, face down in the sand. Without moving the body, she put two fingers on his neck. No pulse. The body also felt colder than it should be after ten minutes from when Scarlet first heard the gunshot. She shined a light over the body. There was definitely a bloody hole in his back, likely an exit wound based on the size. Which meant recovering the bullet was going to be next to impossible out here on the open beach.
She glanced around the immediate area and shined her light down on the sand, toward the ocean. There was a trail of some sort in the sand, but she couldn’t make it out in the dim light. The 911 dispatcher finally picked up Scarlet’s call—nearly two minutes had passed.
She got right to the point. “This is Scarlet Moreno. I called twelve minutes ago about hearing a gunshot. It’s likely a homicide.” She described the body and exactly where she was.
“Did you touch anything?”
“I verified that the victim was deceased, but didn’t move him.”
“A patrol is already there. I’ll give them your exact location. Please wait for the officers and do not touch anything else.”
Scarlet saw the spotlights of the Newport PD patrol car before she saw the car. She wanted to investigate the marks in the sand, but instead, made her way back to the bike path, hoping she knew the responding officers.
Two officers exited the vehicle. She couldn’t see who they were because they had their spotlight on her. That’s when she realized that she was dressed in sweats, a tank top without a bra, and no shoes. The gun in her pocket made her sweatpants hang low. They spotted her weapon immediately.
“Ma’am, do you have a gun on your person?”
“Yes, and a license to carry.” Which she’d left in her apartment. Shit. “I’m Scarlet Moreno. I called in a gunshot, and then the body.”
“Moreno,” one of the cops said and stepped closer.
“Hey, Scott,” she said, relieved. Scott Maddox was a regular at Diego’s.
“Pete, Moreno’s a local P.I., former LAPD. What’s going on?”
She told him everything as if she were giving a police report, and ID’d the house where the witness entered. “I checked the body for signs of life, found none. I walked along the dog prints, but the surf doesn’t come up this far. I doubt there’ll be usable prints in the area.”
Pete said, “Why are you out here at 2:30 in the morning?”
“I heard a gunshot.”
“Where do you live?”
“Apartment over Diego’s bar.”
“Wait here,” Scott said. He and Pete approached the body exactly the way she did, checked his pulse exactly how she did, then Scott came back while Pete circled the area with a flashlight.
“Homicide is on its way,” Scott said.
“McMillan?” Dan McMillan who’d been on the force for years. Both she and Krista knew him well.
Scott shrugged. “Don’t know who’s on call tonight.”
Pete came back and retrieved yellow tape from the back of the patrol car. Another patrol drove up. Scarlet stood out of the way and let the cops do their job. She wanted to go back home, but was also curious about the victim. She’d worked homicide the seven years she was a detective after five years as a patrol officer. She itched to be involved, to talk to the detectives, to find out if time-of-death coincided with what she heard.
Except… she’d only heard one gunshot. So it reasoned that this was the only victim.
Soon, three more patrol cars showed up, and the officers started canvassing the area. They first went to the lady with the Labrador. Scarlet stood and waited. Though it was September and the days were hot, here on the beach at three in the morning, she was beginning to get cold. Not that she would admit it to any of the cops.
“Ms. Moreno?”
She turned and faced a detective. She knew he was a detective because of the badge clipped to his belt. He wore khaki’s, a black T-shirt, and a black windbreaker. It wasn’t Dan McMillan. In fact, she’d never seen him before.
“Yes.”
“Do you have a permit to carry that gun in your pocket?”
“Yes.”
He waited. She waited.
“And?”
“And what?”
“Can I see it?”
“Anytime. It’s in my apartment.”
“Do you know it’s illegal to carry concealed without your CCW on your person?”
“Yes.” One of the uptight, by-the-book, asshole cops. This should be fun.
He either expected an argument or an explanation. When she didn’t say anything, he hesitated.
“I’m Detective Alex Bishop.”
Bishop. The new guy. The cop who took the job that had been offered to her.
She had mixed feelings about turning down the offer extended by Lieutenant Hank Riley. She’d known Riley for years, ever since they’d worked on a regional task force for first responders shortly after 9/11. She’d still been in uniform back then, and Riley had been a detective, but they’d hit it off. Six months ago, he’d asked her to apply for an open detective position. She’d seriously considered it, but two things held her back. First and foremost, she’d promi
sed Krista she’d give their PI business five years to take off. She liked being a private investigator, not beholden to rules that often benefited the criminals over the cops. She could make her own hours and didn’t have to deal with department politics, which drove her insane.
But more important, she wouldn’t be able to continue her very off-the-book investigation into the sting operation that had nearly killed her and Krista. She’d told Krista she’d put the disaster behind her, but she’d been slowly and quietly putting together the pieces, hoping that some day she’d have answers about what happened that fateful day three years ago.
So she’d turned Riley down, and then a few weeks ago he told her he’d hired a detective from up north named Bishop.
She didn’t know why she was feeling so weird about it. It’s not like she wanted the job. She could’ve had it.
“Welcome to Newport Beach.”
He eyed her quizzically, expecting her to elaborate, which she didn’t. She motioned toward the body. “I’m not going anywhere. Go do your thing.”
“Officer Maddox said you found the body.”
“Not exactly. The woman in that house”—she jerked her finger down the street—“found the body. Told me where it was. I verified the victim was dead while calling 911 for the second time. I made the first call after I heard a shot fired.”
“One gunshot?”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“Two-ten.”
“That’s precise. Were you awake?”
“The shot woke me.”
“How do you know it was only one?”
“Because I heard only one. Jumped up, grabbed my gun, looked at my watch. Then I checked downstairs—I live above a bar—and verified there was no one inside and the alarm was engaged. Then I came out to check the alley and immediate area.”
“Maddox said you’d been a cop.”
“LAPD for twelve years.”
“Why’d you leave?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You can go,” he said after a moment. “But make yourself available.”
Crash and Burn Page 3