by Dete Meserve
PERFECTLY GOOD CRIME
Dete Meserve
Melrose Hill
Publishing
Copyright © Dete Meserve, 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, transmitted or distributed in any printed, electronic or mechanical form, including information and storage retrieval systems, without prior permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
ISBN: 978-0991449941
Melrose Hill Publishing
Los Angeles, California
[email protected]
Contact the author:
E-mail: [email protected]
Twitter: @DeteMeserve
Facebook: Facebook.com/GoodSamBook
DeteMeserve.com
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Dedicated to Good Sams everywhere,
who, through actions big and small,
bring light and hope into the world.
Acknowledgments
I cannot tell you the exact moment the storyline for Perfectly Good Crime crystallized enough for me to begin writing it. Ideas had swirled and danced around me for months, sometimes monopolizing my dreams. I had captured them in notebooks but had not yet begun to put them into story. Then the first novel in The Kate Bradley Mystery series—Good Sam—came out and I started hearing from hundreds of readers. Like me, they were seeking good in the world—some shared stories of real-life good Samaritans while others told me of their own acts of kindness for strangers. I was inspired by their posts, their stories, their letters. And their questions. “What will it take to bring worldwide attention to helping those who are less fortunate?” a reader in Michigan wrote. From these connections with readers came a desire—an obsession, really—to write another mystery about the search for good, with Kate Bradley and Eric Hayes at the center.
Perfectly Good Crime would not be possible without help from many readers of early drafts. Thanks to author and friend Kes Trester who was certain I could write a sequel to Good Sam and gave many constructive notes; news reporter and producer Barbara Schroeder who helped me work through Kate’s dilemmas as a journalist; authors Lori Costew, Lisa Wainland, and Darlene Quinn who read drafts with an eye for consistency; and screenwriters Joan Singleton, Catherine Vanden Berge and Debrah Neal who helped me keep the story twists in line.
I was also fortunate to have guidance from Larry Collins, a Battalion Chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, who advised on fire department procedures. Thanks also to Los Angeles Police Department Senior Lead Officer Julie Nony for help with police department details. My knowledge of online games is limited so I had help from my son, Jake, who steered me through that storyline. And perhaps no one knows this manuscript better than my daughter Lauren, a budding writer herself, who listened as I read the manuscript aloud at various stages.
Bringing this novel into your hands required the talented work of editor Angela Brown from New York Book Editors whose notes were always insightful, copy editor Martha Cameron, cover designer Olga Grlic, interior formatter Stef McDaid, and attorney Elizabeth Hopkins at Business Affairs, Inc.
I’m truly grateful for all of their support—and to you for choosing to read Perfectly Good Crime.
Chapter One
My heels dug into the muddy ground as I clambered up the hill. Cries for help mingled with the drone of helicopters overhead, filling the early evening air. I had no idea what I would see at the top of that hill, but I suspected it would give me nightmares for a long time to come.
The sharp smell of burning metal and diesel fuel choked my lungs. I ducked under the yellow police caution tape that stretched across the hill and separated the train tracks above from the sleepy Glendale, California, street below.
“Step back behind the tape,” someone shouted at me. Damn. In the dim light, I could see the voice belonged to a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, clad in a tan uniform shirt and dark green trousers.
“I’m with Channel Eleven,” I answered calmly, even though I knew it wouldn’t get me access. Every other news outlet had been sequestered at the bottom of the hill, where ambulances and fire trucks bathed the scene with red and white flashing lights.
“No media allowed up there. It’s not safe,” he said, shining a flashlight in my face. I motioned for Josh, the news photographer who had been running behind me, to head back down the hill, but I didn’t move. This officer was the one thing standing between me and an exclusive report from the scene of one of the biggest train disasters in Los Angeles history.
“Any way you can give me two minutes up there?” I said, steam rising from my mouth in the cool mountain air. “I covered the last Metrolink crash and we’ll—”
“Officer.” A paramedic raced up, interrupting me. “It’s gridlock by the ambulances. We need help to get through with our stretchers.”
The officer started running down the hill with the paramedic. Then he stopped and pointed at me, “Get back behind the tape.”
I waited until he disappeared into the inky blue darkness and then I darted up the hill. Flames and smoke poured out of the twisted wreckage of the train. There were bodies lying all over the hill, lit by the harsh blue-white light coming from the medevac helicopters overhead. Metal and debris were scattered in chunks along the hilltop as though a giant had ripped the train apart in a rage.
Everywhere I turned, rescue personnel were removing victims from the blazing wreckage. Los Angeles County Fire Department search dogs scoured the train cars for victims. A man in a neck brace was being hoisted up to a hovering helicopter.
A few feet away I spotted a woman’s shoe. A spiral notebook. A briefcase.
It was a scene so raw my first instinct was to look away. To give the victims their dignity. But the wreck was massive and there was nowhere else to look.
“Kate, they want us live in three minutes!” Josh shouted at me as he rushed up the hill.
“I’ll be ready,” I said calmly, but there was no way I was calm or ready.
A wave of nausea engulfed me. I had covered natural disasters, murders, and tragedy for eight years on TV news, but nothing had prepared me for this level of devastation. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should be doing something to help—anything—rather than preparing for a news report.
Running out of a curtain of smoke, a group of paramedics carried a small girl on a stretcher down the hill. Through the haze I saw Eric, standing with a group of other firefighters, all in yellow turnout gear as they prepared to ascend a ladder to get inside the toppled train car.
“Eric,” I called out to him, but my voice was drowned out by the deafening noise around me. Still, he glanced in my direction and I ran toward him.
His face was smudged with dirt and sweat. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, his voice raspy with
emotion. “The fire is out of control. There are dead bodies on top of survivors. This is something you don’t want to see.”
I wanted to assure him I was okay, so I reached out to touch his free hand. But my hand only grazed his fingertips as he and his team headed up the ladder.
After my exclusive live coverage from the scene, my follow-up report was slated for the opening slot in the all-important eleven o’clock newscast.
Or so I thought.
“We’re going to lead with Susan’s report,” Craig said in my earpiece. “Then come to your story about ninety seconds into the cast.”
I opened my mouth to reply but no words came out. Susan Andrews covered celebrity news—celebrity crimes, celebrity trials. Celebrity meltdowns. What story could she possibly have that would trump exclusive on-the-scene coverage of one of the most devastating train accidents in LA history?
“What’s she covering?” I asked.
“A burglary at an estate in Bel Air.”
There’s no way a burglary could go ahead of a train disaster in the news lineup. In the city of LA, over fifty burglaries take place every day—more than eighteen thousand per year—and few ever make the TV news. Unlike robberies, which involve some kind of violence or threat during the theft, burglaries don’t play well on TV. You can’t show the stuff that’s been stolen and, frankly, burglary stories are boring to viewers unless they know the victim. Which had to mean that a celebrity was involved.
“Which celebrity?” I asked.
“No one famous. But the thieves stole over two million dollars in cash and luxury goods.”
A two-million-dollar heist. I didn’t like being second to any story that entertainment reporter Susan Andrews covered, and certainly not second to a burglary story. But a two-million-dollar heist was unheard of, even in Los Angeles, and I was intrigued. For a microsecond. “I cross police lines and put my own safety at risk to cover the biggest train disaster in the city’s history and you’re telling me—”
“No time to argue.” Craig cut me off. “Take it up with David later.”
My assignment editor, David Dyal, was in a sugar rehab. His doctor had told him to lose a few pounds, get his cholesterol in check, and lower his blood pressure, so the first thing he quit was his six-a-day habit of Dr Pepper. He replaced it with a juice he made fresh each morning using kale, spinach, and some other dark leafy greens I’d never heard of. The stuff made the lunch room smell like a compost heap.
Worse, it was making him cranky.
“Not now, Kate,” he said when I stepped into his office the next morning. His face was ash white instead of its usual ruddy complexion, and he was typing rapidly on his laptop.
I had hoped for at least a nod of appreciation for last night’s exclusive reporting from the train disaster scene. But given David’s aversion to compliments—he thought any form of praise made reporters “soft”—I was more likely to win the lottery.
“I don’t understand why we led with the burglary story last night instead of the train disaster. It makes us look like we aren’t serious about reporting the important news stories.”
“Point registered,” he said without looking up from his laptop.
“How can we expect to be number one in the market if we don’t lead with the biggest train disaster in LA history?”
“I heard you, Kate.”
I didn’t move. I knew if I waited there in his doorway long enough he’d have to look up eventually. One…two…three…
He took off his reading glasses and placed them on his desk. “If it makes you feel better we were all conflicted about it. But we determined that a two million dollar heist of a billionaire’s home would attract a bigger lead-in audience than the train derailment.”
“People lost their lives in that train wreck. The right thing to do was lead with a story about eight dead and a hundred and fifteen injured, not a fluff story about a billionaire’s estate being robbed.”
He sighed. “This is the news business, Kate. Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t the best thing for attracting an audience. You know that.”
Even though I didn’t like hearing it, he was right. Three months after covering the story about Good Sam, the man who anonymously left $100,000 in cash on doorsteps throughout Los Angeles, I was struggling to find purpose in many of the stories that dominated our newscasts. I’d covered several high-profile stories for the network since then: the Suitcase Murder, about the dead body of a man found stuffed in a suitcase in the Verdugo Wash; the accidental shooting of a former city council member during a chaotic hostage situation in West Hollywood; and the gunman who shot seven students on the campus of LA Valley College. Judging from Channel Eleven’s jump from fourth to second in the ratings, those stories were attracting viewers. But even as I covered them, I wondered, were they really news? What did viewers gain from knowing about these murders and tragedies? Were we simply selling fear and sensationalism?
David rolled up the sleeve of his blue plaid shirt, a sure sign that a lecture was coming. “That’s one of your problems, Kate. You think the world is black-and-white. But there aren’t good decisions or bad ones. Good guys or bad guys. That’s not the way things work. Most of the time we’re muddling around in murky shades of gray.”
“One of my problems?”
“That, and you’re stubborn.”
“I’m not stubborn,” I said, realizing his mini-analysis of me was distracting me from what I came here to do. “I know that if we want to be number one, we should be opening our casts with the train derailment story.”
“Heard you loud and clear, Kate. Now why don’t you get back out there and cover that story instead of talking to me about it?”
As I headed back to the newsroom, I knew David was wrong. Maybe his perspective was warped from too many years in the executive chair. But in a reporter’s world, things are black-and-white. The drive-by shooting victim is either dead or alive. Terrorist attacks are bad. The discovery of flowing liquid water on Mars is good.
Back in the reporters’ bullpen, I found Josh and our associate producer, Hannah, peering intently at Hannah’s computer. “That’s got to be a typo,” Josh was saying, pointing at a photo on the screen. “That house can’t be sixty thousand square feet. They must mean six thousand. Right?”
“Actually, no,” Hannah said. “It has a ballroom, three elevators, a paddle-tennis court, a closet the size of a boutique store, a guardhouse—”
“One of you shopping for a new home?” I asked.
“Not one like this.” Hannah pointed to the screen. “This is the estate that was robbed last night. Chateau de Soleil in Bel Air. Susan’s story.”
I frowned. Even Hannah and Josh had fallen under this fluff story’s spell.
“It’s got a squash court. What the heck is that?” Josh asked.
“It’s a racquet game you play and afterward you sit around drinking liqueurs while discussing the S&P 500,” Hannah said. She was barely twenty-two years old, but her far-apart blue eyes gave her a kind of other-century look that made her seem much older.
“Damn, what kind of guy lives in those kind of digs?” Josh asked.
“A Silicon Valley entrepreneur,” Hannah said. “The guy spent north of sixty million dollars building his dream château, then gets robbed within a year of moving in”
“Okay, story time is over.” I pointed at my watch. “Josh, we’re replacing Ken and Christopher at the derailment site. Time to get back to reporting on some real news.”
After another fourteen hours reporting from the train derailment site, I awoke the next morning feeling like I’d been in a desert sandstorm. My eyes were gummed up and my skin was parched and tight from the smoke-filled air. I’d been so exhausted that I’d forgotten to remove my contacts and had fallen asleep on top of my duvet, still dressed in the navy blue slacks and tan blouse I’d worn to the scene.
Once the fire was contained, reporters had been allowed within severa
l feet of the train wreck site. But even hours with unfettered access didn’t make the coverage any less dramatic. This one single tragedy shattered dozens of families’ lives. I was crushed by the stories of lives lost and the many people who sustained life-altering injuries. Even talking with the lucky survivors, some of whom escaped with little more than a scratch, didn’t make the reporting easier.
But this was why I signed up for the job of covering tragedy, conflict, and disaster on local news. Not because I actually like those things—I rarely watch them on TV if I’m not reporting on them—but because I hope I can be the one to show the silver lining. The helpers, the first responders to the scene, the people who will make the situation better. And for once, this story had plenty of that. Throughout the night, there were many moments of astonishing heroism on display as Eric and the Los Angeles County Urban Search and Rescue Team, along with other firefighters, paramedics, and rescuers, worked to free victims from the wreckage.
Josh had not fared so well. Eventually the smell and the bodies became too much for him. At one point, he dumped his camera in the grass and retched into a large trash container.
“How do you do it?” he’d asked later, gulping from a huge bottle of water. “Do you have some kind of tragedy gene that helps you deal with all this?”
I didn’t have an answer. I once worked with a TV news helicopter pilot who had claimed that his abusive childhood had been excellent training for reporting on the chaos of LA riots, earthquakes, and violence. He did his best work under tremendous stress, he said, because that’s the environment he grew up in. My childhood was abuse-free and secure, so I couldn’t point to anything that had made reporting on tragedy easier for me than for other reporters.
“No tragedy gene,” I said. “I only know that if we stay in it and don’t quit—no matter how hard it gets—we can show stories that give viewers hope. What we do matters.”
I don’t know if my pep talk helped Josh any, but we did manage to labor through several more hours on that windy hilltop. But I hadn’t escaped that long night of reporting unscathed. I sat up in bed and looked in the mirror above my dresser. My face was pale with fatigue, my light brown hair had turned into a frizzy mass, and there were dark puffy circles beneath my eyes. My clothes had the distinct odor of smoke and dirt, and I doubted even my expensive dry cleaner could ever get that smell out of them. I frowned at my low-heel pumps, their leather scarred and pitted from the mud and gravel by the train rails.