by Chris Mooney
His mother visited him, though, every Saturday, until the bone cancer progressed. Frank brought his mother up every Saturday. Frank continued to visit him when his mother no longer could. Frank was the one who had told him that Ava had moved in with another man. Told her she had gotten married. Was pregnant.
His phone vibrated once; he’d received a text.
It was from Frank. Two words: Call ASAP.
“Excuse me for a moment, Mrs. Marcus.”
Sebastian went outside, through the front door. He could hear waves lapping in the distance as he made the call. Frank picked up immediately.
“What’s up?” Sebastian asked.
“Not what. Who. Your stepson.”
Sebastian bristled. He hated it when Frank—hell, when anyone—used that word. Paul wasn’t his stepson—not in any legal way, Paul simply being a part of the package when Trixie moved in . . . Christ, twenty-two years ago? Had it been that long? It had, he realized; Paul had been two, still in diapers. They had never married, he and Trixie—had just lived together until the day she died. It was coming up on a year now, her death, Trixie marooning him with her now twenty-four-year-old son, Paul, full of ugly tattoos and misplaced anger and confidence.
“How bad is it?”
“When I get through telling you,” Frank said, “you’ll want to order his headstone.”
CHAPTER 4
ELLIE TOLD THE paramedic she thought she was going to throw up.
“Not a problem,” he said. His name was Brad and he was somewhere around her age, she guessed, in his early to mid-twenties, and had a boyish, almost angelic face. He smiled, all perfect white teeth, when he handed her a good-sized barf bag. “Nausea is a perfectly normal side effect from the adrenaline dump you just suffered.”
As was crying, she supposed. Ellie didn’t tell him how badly she wanted him to leave the back of the ambulance and lock the door so she could break down, get it all out of her system.
She wouldn’t cry—couldn’t cry. A woman caught boo-hooing on the job, even if the reason was that she had seen her partner get wasted, was immediately branded as weak and unreliable. Always remember to grieve on your own time, a prominent female detective had once warned her. If you cry, show any emotion of any kind, the boys will never look at you the same way again. They’ll automatically think you don’t have what it takes for when the shit really hits the fan.
So far, she’d kept it together throughout the whole ordeal that followed the shooting. In a strong, clear voice she took her supervisor through how it all went down.
Her voice didn’t break once, and it hadn’t broken when she’d had to give her official statement to the pair of investigators from the “shooting squad.” She didn’t balk when they bagged her firearm and placed it into evidence, or when they demanded she give a blood sample for toxicology testing, to see if she had been under the influence of alcohol or drugs when she fired the weapon.
Now, though? Now she felt like she was coming apart at the seams.
Brad checked her blood pressure again. “Still a little low, but not too bad,” he said. “Again, that’s normal, given what you’ve gone through.”
The back door suddenly swung open, letting in a blast of hot air and jarring noises—crackling police radios and voices shouting over one another. She also heard the sound of a helicopter, maybe more than one, hovering somewhere overhead.
A patrolman she didn’t recognize motioned for her to come out. “Commissioner’s here, wants to see you,” he said.
“Before you go,” Brad said to her, “your blood pressure and heart rate may decide to suddenly drop, so the second you feel light-headed? Sit down immediately, because there’s a good chance you’re going to faint.”
Ellie thanked him and got out, surprised to see how much the area had changed during the two hours she’d spent sequestered inside the ambulance—dozens of cruisers, their lights flashing, and people, mostly reporters, she guessed, crowded behind blockades; news copters hovering in the sky, taking aerial footage of the backyard and the chaos in the surrounding streets. A patrolman was stationed at the front doors, his sole job to write down the name of every single person who entered the home. She spotted two more patrolmen, holding clipboards, standing near the gates along the fence. It was overkill, yes, but it was always better to control the chaos as much as possible—and have plenty of paperwork to prove to a jury that no one had slacked off on maintaining the integrity of the crime scene.
As a general rule, police commissioners stayed away from crime scenes and focused on the really important work, like paperwork and politics and making sure they looked good in front of the cameras. They were more administrators than cops, and wherever they traveled the media wasn’t too far behind.
But there were exceptions, like the killing of a police officer, or if the crime had a high-profile element to it that needed to be thoroughly understood so it could be spun properly for the public. What happened here in Brentwood had both elements: a cop killed during the commission of a blood crime in one of the safest, most expensive neighborhoods in Los Angeles—a definite first. Of course the man was here.
It was easy to spot Kelly, a mountain of a man who stood six six. He paced along the grass near the side of the house where Danny had entered the backyard. As Ellie drew closer, she saw Kelly had a phone mashed against his ear. He wore a tan suit with a stylish tie and a pair of rimless eyeglasses with lenses that magnified his intense blue eyes.
She didn’t know the man personally—had never met him—but she had heard he was frank and tough, with zero tolerance for bullshit. When he was deputy chief, he was given the nickname “the Pied Piper” for his ability to ferret out crooked cops.
Kelly told the person on the other line he had to go and hung up.
“Walk me through what happened,” he said. Then he paused, as if reconsidering his words, and looked her over briefly. “Are you up to it?”
“I’m up to it.”
“Good.”
The way he said it, Ellie got the feeling she had passed some sort of test. “Have we made any progress here, sir?”
“We’ve got an APB out on the vehicle and the shooter, copters in the air searching, but so far, nothing.”
She led Kelly through the backyard dappled with afternoon sunlight, and explained everything that had happened. Everywhere she looked she saw glass fragments and spent shell casings and blood—and three dead bodies.
“The boy over there? He’s a stickman,” Ellie said. “That’s what they call themselves, the kids they use to find out if people are carriers.”
Why did I say that? Of course he knows what a stickman is. Kelly flashed her a look that told her as much. Dammit, Batista, get your shit together.
“What makes you think he’s a stickman?” Kelly asked.
“May I show you?”
The commissioner scratched the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “Go ahead,” he said.
Ellie moved to the chaise longue where the skinny teenager with the man bun had sat earlier. His body and what was left of his head were now concealed inside a forensic tent to prevent news copters and any reporters and bystanders from viewing the carnage.
She reached into her pants pocket for a pair of latex gloves, used her other hand to wave down one of the forensic techs working the backyard. She wanted this documented and on the record, just in case. Better to cover your ass than to have your ass handed to you in court.
“The canvas bag,” she said to the male tech. “Has it been photographed?”
The man checked his tablet. “It has,” he said.
“What about the contents inside?”
“Just pictures of what we can see. We haven’t searched through it yet.”
Ellie turned to Kelly and said, “Sir, with your permission, I’d like to reach into the bag.”
Kelly nodded, th
en told the tech to document the process—including video. The tech held up his tablet and then recorded Ellie as she carefully dipped a gloved hand inside the bag, with its neatly folded towel and change of clothes and a couple of paperback books, as well as a clear bag holding processed and ready-to-eat food like meal-replacement bars and nuts.
When she stood, she had, pinched between her fingers, what at first glance looked like the kind of small flashlight people tossed into a glove compartment or a cabinet underneath a kitchen sink. Only the black metal tube she was holding didn’t have a bulb, and it was small enough to conceal in your palm.
“Do you recognize this, sir?”
Kelly shook his head. The tech didn’t answer, either, too busy recording.
“This was originally developed for diabetics to get blood glucose levels,” Ellie said. “The army had it modified so blood types could be determined on the battlefield, in order to speed along the process of an emergency transfusion. You press the button on the end here with your thumb and a very fine needle ejects and pierces the skin so fast that most people don’t even realize they’ve been pricked. It only takes a few seconds to get a result. It flashes on the small LED screen right here on the side.”
Kelly was looking at her with avid interest—and some skepticism, too, she thought.
“Word on the street,” Ellie said, “is that these devices have been modified to identify the proteins in carrier blood—within seconds, from what I’ve heard.” She returned the item to its original place inside the bag.
Kelly thanked the tech, his tone leaving no doubt that the man should leave and get back to work.
Then she was alone with Kelly again.
“That injector,” he said. “How do you know about it?”
Ellie had learned early on that there was nothing more dangerous to a powerful man than a woman who, intentionally or not, made him feel stupid or inferior.
“I do a lot of reading,” Ellie said. “And I visit a lot of blood chat rooms on the deep web. There are a lot of theories out there—”
“Thank you for your help, Officer Batista. And I’m sorry about the loss of your partner.” Kelly seemed to genuinely mean it.
“Sir, the two vics inside the house—have they been identified?”
“Not yet. Thank you—you’re dismissed.” Kelly left toward the house.
Ellie saw her opportunity. It was risky, but she might not get it again.
“Sir, with your permission, I’d like to see them. I didn’t get a close-up look the first time I was in there, when I was clearing the house.”
“Did you touch them? Disturb the crime scene in any way?”
“No, sir. I did everything by the book. Cleared the house, checked for a pulse, and then radioed dispatch. Nothing will come back to bite us on the ass. You have my word on that.”
Kelly’s features relaxed a bit.
“The reason I asked to see them again,” Ellie said. “Sir, I think I know who they are.”
CHAPTER 5
POLICE COMMISSIONER KELLY was looking at her with renewed interest. Not in the admiring way you looked at someone who could help you, but in the suspicious way you looked at someone you suspected was holding important information from you.
“I only saw a quick glimpse of them when I was in the house,” Ellie explained, which was true. When she had entered the bedroom down the hall, she’d found the victims, a male and a female, both in their late teens or early twenties, tucked underneath the covers as though sleeping. Her first thought was that they were, in fact, asleep—and drugged. They had to have been drugged, because that was the only logical explanation as to how they’d slept through the gunfire.
Then she saw the backs of their heads and knew what had happened to them.
“If I could take a closer look, I believe I could identify the victims.”
She had a personal and completely selfish ulterior motive for not wanting to share the victims’ names right here, right now, with Commissioner Kelly. If she told him, he would dismiss her and then head into the house and share the names with Detective Alves, the head of the Blood Unit. Maybe Kelly would tell him who had given him the names, maybe not. For the past few hours, she had been mulling over ideas of how she could use this information to her advantage. The way she figured it, if she could find a way to get inside the bedroom, take a look at the bodies, and then share her findings, she could show Detective Alves what a valuable asset she could be on Blood Crimes. Now that the commissioner was involved—even better. Identifying the victims might very well be her ticket into a spot on BCU.
First, she had to convince Kelly to let her inside.
“The two vics,” Ellie said. “I’m pretty sure they’re carriers.”
“Names?”
“I need to take a closer look to be sure, but if I’m right, they’ve been missing for . . . well, a good amount of time.”
“How long?”
“Years,” she said.
Kelly stared at her, Ellie feeling the weight of his gaze. She said, “When carriers are abducted, you either find them drained and dumped or you don’t find them at all. This is the first time, as far as I know, that carriers have been found inside a residence.”
“You’re right about that.”
“Let me see if I can help you ID them.”
Kelly nodded his head toward the house, signaling for her to join him.
Ellie entered the house for a second time, only now she was wearing a white bunny suit that covered her from head to toe. Kelly was wearing the same kind of suit.
The inside was cool and still reeked of cordite from the gunfire. Ellie caught the half a dozen or so forensic techs in the living room and adjoining kitchen flick their gazes between the commissioner and her, as though the two of them were invading their turf—which they were.
Kelly carefully made his way to the staircase, watching where he stepped. Ellie took in her surroundings.
The living room had high ceilings and a gray stone floor and white walls, the furniture modern—the type that was more artistic than designed for comfort. Numbered neon evidence markers sat next to each shell casing on the floor. The pattern indicated that Gingerbread Man had fired while he was inside the house, kept shooting on his way down the hall, to the door leading into the garage.
The second floor, Ellie noticed, felt considerably warmer. Or maybe it was just her nerves.
Detective Alves was waiting for them in the brightly lit hallway, standing next to a tall white wall holding an enormous painting of a nude woman crawling through a desert, toward a bloodred sun. He was a short, angry Portuguese man with gray hair that was cut close to the scalp. He looked five ten but was probably closer to five eight. She’d heard he wore shoes with lifts, to give him a couple of extra inches.
Alves’s gaze screamed, What the hell is she doing here?
“Our two vics,” Kelly said. “Have you identified them yet?”
“No, sir, not yet,” Alves replied. “And it’s going to take some time. Both victims, their fingerprints were burned off some time ago—acid, judging by the scarring. The tech assigned to our unit has already collected their blood samples and is on his way back to the lab to start preparing them, add ’em to the List.”
The List, Ellie knew, was a new and ever-growing database containing the names of missing and dead carriers. Almost all of the names on the List were of people in their early twenties and younger.
For years, the LAPD had wanted to identify carriers living in the state, but everyone jumped all over it, citing medical privacy and possible conspiracy scenarios where officers sold the names of carriers to the blood cartels. The LAPD backed off, but the current president had recently made statements about the importance of identifying carriers within communities so the police could better serve them. There were rumblings about passing a federal law making carriers com
e forward and sign up, but privacy and civil liberty groups kept shutting it down.
“I’ve spoken to the husband,” Alves said. “He’s in London, visiting his daughter, Luciana. That’s her bedroom down the hall, where the two vics are. His wife stayed behind—came down with food poisoning, he said.” Alves swung his attention to Ellie.
Kelly addressed the elephant in the room. “Officer Batista told me she might be able to help us identify the victims. She believes they’re carriers, wants to take a closer look.”
“Which victim do you think you know?” Alves asked her.
“Maybe both,” Ellie replied.
Alves raised his hairy unibrow at that.
“Let’s get on with it,” Kelly said.
Ellie approached the male. He was Hispanic and had a thick mop of black hair that covered his ears. Alves stood on the opposite side of the queen-sized bed. He looked only at the commissioner.
“No sign of a struggle, as you can see,” Alves said. “Looks like they were both attacked while they were sleeping.” Using a gloved finger, he pulled back the woman’s long hair so Kelly could see the stab wound on the back of the neck, near the base of the skull. “My money’s on a hunting knife. Blade was slid in sideways and more or less severed the brain stem. Takes a lot of strength to do something like this.”
Ellie said, “One of them would have woken up, don’t you think?”
Alves let go of the hair. He didn’t answer her question, looked only at Kelly. “My operating theory is that our guy was inside the house when Officers Batista and Boyle entered the backyard. Saw that Officer Boyle had engaged with the woman, Mrs. Vargas, and then he panicked, swiftly executed the two vics before he went out back.”
That would explain why Gingerbread Man took so long coming out of the house after we arrived, Ellie thought. He couldn’t have escaped with these two, and he had killed them so they couldn’t talk later to the police.