Killer In The Hills (A Jack Rhodes Mystery)

by Stephen Carpenter

“Stay in the car,” I say, and close my door before I can hear her response.

  I hit Melvin’s number and he answers on the first ring.

  “Where are you, Jack?” he says. Right to the point.

  “I’ll tell you in a second, but first you have to agree to something,” I say.

  Silence.

  “I have Karen, and I have the security video from the Chateau Marmont, which proves she wasn’t there the night her mother was killed. I want you to bring her in quietly, and hold her until we’ve got a lawyer for her.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” he says. “Where are you?”

  “One more thing,” I say. “Come alone, and don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”

  “Can’t do it, Jack. You know that.”

  “There are people who want to kill her, Melvin,” I say. “I won’t do this any other way.”

  Silence again. I picture Investigator Wen frantically typing away at his command station, tracking the phone.

  “I know it’s against regulation and every instinct you have, but it’s the only way to guarantee her safety. It’s me and a fifteen year-old girl and you know we won’t be any trouble.”

  I wait. He says nothing. I can’t stay on the phone any longer. I have one last card to play—a tricky one, but it’s all I’ve got. Hobson’s choice.

  “I’m trying to save my daughter’s life, Melvin. Just like I saved yours once.”

  Silence upon silence. I have broken an unspoken code. I have made it personal, and made Melvin appear the weaker player, which I know he cannot abide. When he finally speaks I can hear the restrained anger in his voice.

  “Alright,” he says.

  “Lot K at the Rose Bowl. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  I hear the click as he hangs up. I pull the battery from the phone and get back in the car. Karen glares at me, furious.

  “Who were you talking to?” she says.

  “Someone who’s going to help us,” I say. “He’s a friend and I trust him.”

  “Who, the FBI guy?” she says.

  “He’s a friend.”

  “He’s a cop,” she says. “You’re turning me in.”

  “Look, you were right,” I say. “We can’t keep driving around with nowhere to go. I’ve done everything I can do, and now there’s no one who can help us but my friend. Yeah, he’ll take you to the cops eventually, but first I’m going to make sure they have the video from the hotel, which proves that you weren’t there the night your mother was killed; and second, I’m going to get you a good lawyer. It’s your best shot. It’s your only shot, in fact.”

  “Bullshit,” she says, her voice rising an octave. “I’d be better off if you hadn’t fucking kidnapped me in the first place.”

  “Really. You think Sal would have liked having you around with your face all over the news? I thought he was all about being under the radar. Unless you were lying to me.”

  She looks away and chews on a thin strand of beads in her hair.

  “Have you lied to me? About anything?”

  “No,” she says, but she doesn’t look at me when she says it.

  I look at my watch—4:47. I open my door.

  “Stay in the car,” I say. “I want to make sure he’s alone before I come for you. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  I get out and go to the trunk and grab Zach’s bag of computer gear and sling it over my shoulder. Karen gets out of the car and slams her door and walks down the dark street, away from me.

  I catch up to her.

  “Get back in the car,” I say.

  “Fuck you,” she says, walking faster to get ahead of me.

  I grab her wrist and she turns and punches me in the face with her free hand. I grab her fist and turn her around and hold her arms behind her as she struggles.

  “Let me go,” she says.

  “No.”

  “You said I could leave anytime I wanted,” she says.

  “Not anymore.”

  I wrestle her back to the car and crowd her against the passenger door.

  “You bastard—” She tries to kick me, but I stand to the side and step on her foot. She gives a short shriek and I gather both of her tiny wrists in one hand and take the handcuffs from my back pocket.

  “Gonna cuff me to the car again—?” she yells, her voice choked off by a sob. A tear lands on the sooty roof of the Corolla.

  “Nope,” I say, and slap one cuff over her right wrist and ratchet it tight, then snap the other cuff to my left wrist. Then I wrap my free arm around her waist and carry her toward the steep hillside that leads down to the Bowl.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I have never surfed a mudslide while handcuffed to an angry badger but now I know what it would be like, so I don’t have to.

  We stumble and slide and Karen falls twice, taking me down with her once. It takes us about fifteen minutes to skid down the steep incline, grabbing at brush and bush to slow our descent. By the time we reach the bottom we are muddy, scratched, bruised, and our wrists are bleeding from the cuffs. I am also bleeding from her nails and her teeth, where she bit my free wrist after we fell. She has cursed me completely, colorfully—a rainbow of rage that would blanch a merchant marine—but by the time we reach the bottom of the hillside she no longer has breath to speak. We stand behind an enormous sage bush, sucking damp air into our lungs, about twenty feet from the edge of the parking lot. I wipe the mud from my watch crystal—nineteen minutes since I called Melvin.

  I look at the parking lot from behind the bush. It is empty and feebly lighted with a dozen or so mercury vapor streetlights. Tactically, it’s not a bad spot—a large, wide-open space, surrounded by ample cover. The sun is a fading pink glow behind the western hills and in a minute or two it will be dark. I believe Melvin will come alone, but just in case he doesn’t I’ll know it before he sees us. Hopefully.

  “What’s gonna happen?” Karen says, when she catches enough breath to speak. “When he gets here—what are you gonna do?”

  “I’m going to show him the security video and get you a lawyer.”

  “Is he gonna arrest me?” she says. Her voice is small and tight and I can feel her starting to tremble.

  “That’s up to him.”

  “What if he does?” she says, her voice rising. “What if—”

  “Stop wondering about what if,” I say. “We’ll know soon enough.”

  “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

  “Lean over, focus on your breathing. Try not to think about what ifs.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?” she says.

  “Negative capability,” I say.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Means being able to live with a bad situation—where you don’t know the outcome and things are uncertain—without worrying about making sense of it. It’s from the poet Keats.”

  “It’s bullshit.”

  “Not a big Keats fan?”

  “You bastard.”

  “Stop talking. Breathe.”

  A minute later a black Crown Vic pulls into the lot and circles the perimeter slowly. When it passes us I see Melvin at the wheel, alone—assuming there are no snipers coiled in the trunk. I look around the lot, then scan the residential streets around the stadium. I see no other cars. I hear no aircraft. Melvin parks under a streetlight near the center of the lot, then gets out of the car and stands next to it, facing us directly.

  Karen stares at him through the spray of sage and says nothing.

  I put my hand on her shoulder.

  “Let’s go.”

  She trails out behind me on stiff legs, still breathless, but now more from fear than exertion, I think. Her eyes never leave Melvin, and as we near him and he grows larger she grabs my hand.

  Melvin stands still, watching us approach. His jacket is open, his hands free at his sides. As we near him he sees us more clearly and his eyes narrow—his most vivid expression of surprise. He looks at the cuffs, then at Karen’s desperate face
. He looks at my filthy, torn clothes, bloody scratches, and both of my bleeding wrists. A crown of thorns would complete me.

  We stop about five feet in front of him.

  “Karen, this is Melvin. Melvin, Karen.”

  No one says anything. Melvin rests his eyes on mine for a moment. He shows no affect whatsoever, which means he is furious. I turn slowly, guiding Karen around, offering Zach’s bag toward him, over my shoulder.

  “In the bag is security video from the Chateau Marmont,” I say. “On the laptop. You’ll see Penelope’s killer, and it’s clearly not Karen.”

  I wait. After a moment he comes up behind me, wipes the mud off the top of the bag, and pulls out the laptop.

  “Stupid,” he says, so low I can barely hear his voice. But his disgust is loud and clear.

  He puts the laptop on the hood of the car. Then he searches the empty bag and me, finding the key to the cuffs in my pocket. He unlocks our cuffs, pats Karen down, then takes out his own cuffs and begins to handcuff her and she starts to cry and I hear the Hummer behind us.

  We all turn, Melvin drawing his 500. He aims at the car, which is speeding at us from the entrance to the parking lot. I see a flash from the Hummer’s passenger window and hear POP-POP and Melvin’s head snaps back and blood sprays into my eyes and Melvin is thrown backward onto us and I hear the Hummer skid to a stop just before my head hits the wet pavement.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I was knocked out once during my boxing days. I had gotten up off the mat in a few seconds with a blind rage I’d never felt before. My mind was blank and my body did the thinking for me as I beat my opponent to the canvas and the ref had to pull me away. Anger trumps fear.

  When I come to on the wet pavement I feel the same clarity of rage. Judging from the distance the three men have walked from the Hummer, I have only been out for a few seconds. Melvin is on top of Karen and me—unconscious or dead—and the three men are approaching slowly, following their guns. I wipe the blood from my eyes on the back of Melvin’s jacket and peer over his shoulder at the three men. I feel around the ground for the 500, reaching under Karen’s legs briefly. She isn’t moving.

  Leading the trio of gunmen is a tall, heavily-built man in a black leather coat. He has long black hair and tinted glasses in thick black frames. Behind him are two short, squat men who look like the men from the airport.

  The tall man stops, about twenty feet from us. He says something and the two short men fan out, flanking us. I try to keep all of them in sight as I feel around for the gun, my mind blank, my body on auto-pilot, working faster than my mind can keep up. Melvin’s right arm is twisted behind him and I move my hand down his arm and find the 500 still in his grip. The tall man says something that I recognize as Russian and one of the short men walks up to us and places a boot on Melvin’s shoulder and kicks Melvin’s 260-pound frame off of us and I raise the 500 with both hands and shoot the short man in the face. Then I shoot the other short man in the chest, and then I shoot at the tall man. He fires back at the same time. We both miss.

  Karen sits up and screams. I shove her back down and climb on top of her as the tall man runs back to the Hummer and opens the driver’s door and fires from behind it. He fires wild—his gun is fully automatic and the bullets snap past my head and pepper the pavement around us. I aim at the center of the Hummer’s door and fire and the door is blown halfway off—left hanging by a single hinge. The tall man ducks back to the rear of the Hummer and I roll off of Karen, grab her up in my arms, and try to run.

  We only get a few steps before the Hummer’s engine roars and I turn and see it bearing down on us. I hold Karen with one arm, keeping her behind me as I turn and aim at the Hummer, trying to remember if the 500 holds six rounds or five. I fire at the Hummer and miss. A shock of pain shoots up my forearm—for a heartbeat I think I’m shot, then I realize that firing the 500 off-balance and one-handed has broken something in my rebuilt wrist. I jump out of the way of the Hummer, taking Karen with me. We hit the ground and the Hummer swerves around us, the door flying completely off and sliding into my leg. It is heavy with armor and the impact stuns me for a moment. Karen makes a panicked, animal sound and twists away from me and runs toward the brush at the edge of the lot. The Hummer U-turns and heads after her. I get up and try to run but my leg buckles. I look down and see a long, sharp shard of the door’s broken hinge sticking out of my thigh. I pull it out. The Hummer drives up alongside Karen and the man grabs her and pulls her inside without stopping. I aim the gun at him but he is holding Karen too close. He floors it and the Hummer fishtails on the wet pavement and I aim at the left rear tire and pull the trigger but the gun is out. The Hummer plows through a chain-link fence, bounces off the curb, and speeds up into the hills and is gone.

  I go to Melvin. There is an entrance wound above his right eye and the back of his head is bloody. He is not breathing. I feel for a pulse on his neck and wrist and feel nothing. I perform CPR for a minute and check his pulse again—nothing.

  “Come on, buddy,” I say, and continue chest compressions.

  Sirens swell somewhere. I realize that I have heard voices since the Hummer left, and look up and see two men by the guard station near the entrance to the stadium, about a hundred yards away.

  I keep up the CPR until I feel a weak, irregular pulse in Melvin’s neck, and a long line of flashing lights winds down the hillside toward the parking lot. When I catch a glimpse of a red cube van—Pasadena Fire Department paramedics—I step up the CPR until the caravan of screaming PFD vehicles roars up to the lot. Then I tuck the 500 into my waistband and pull Melvin’s custom speed-loader from his belt and pocket it. I go to the two men I shot and grab their guns, phones, and wallets. I glance at the man I shot in the face and his head is mostly gone.

  I run.

  The paramedics reach Melvin just as I tear a hole in the thick brush at the base of the hillside.

  Run.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Forty minutes later I park the Corolla in the underground lot beneath a shopping mall on Ventura Boulevard, in Studio City. The car is running on fumes and so am I. The climb back up the hillside pumped a lot of blood out of the wound in my leg, soaking the lower half of my pant-leg and leaving me lightheaded.

  I avoid the escalator and take the enclosed stairs to the ground floor of the mall and go inside the Rite Aid. It is nearly empty. I try to avoid the security cameras but there are too many. I am wearing my baseball cap low and my dark pants don’t show the blood, although I am limping and leaving red tracks from my bloody shoe on the gleaming white tile floor. I buy bandages, hydrogen peroxide, pain relievers, medical tape, towels, a pair of sweatpants and socks, and two quarts of Gatorade. I pay with cash from the headless man’s wallet. The clerk—a heavyset young Asian man—stares at my muddy clothes in a way I don’t like, so I leave quickly and go back to the car and drive out of the mall.

  A couple of miles east of the Rite Aid I spot a dark, empty overflow lot by the Metro station across from Universal Studios. I pull into the lot and park in the darkest corner of the lot, under a freeway overpass. I tilt my seat halfway back and take off my pants and pour hydrogen peroxide into the wound in my thigh. It stings like fire, but it takes my mind off of the throbbing pain in my wrist. The principle of counter-irritant. I dress the wound in my leg with large cotton bandages, then rip one of the towels into strips and tie two of the strips tightly around my thigh, but not too tight. I wrap my wrist with tape—I’m certain it’s broken but there’s nothing I can do about that now. I put on my new sweatpants and socks and drain half a quart of Gatorade to wash down six Advil tablets. The Advil will make the bleeding worse, but the pain in my leg and wrist and will abate. I am shaking and my breathing is shallow and my heart is racing and now my thoughts catch up with my limbs. After the battle comes the fear.

  I tilt my seat all the way back and pull a towel over me and crank up the car’s heater to warm up and avoid going into shock. I close my eyes and let t
he pills work and focus on my breathing and after about five minutes I catch my breath and my pulse slows back down to something resembling normal. Now I can take stock and think about what to do next.

  The wallets from the dead men contain a total of eleven credit cards and five drivers licenses. Combined, they also hold a little over six hundred dollars cash. I match three of the credit cards with the names on three of the licenses, and put them in my wallet. I put the unmatched cards in my pocket. The radio has been playing the local news station softly since I turned it on when I left Pasadena. I have heard a couple of reports about a “shooting incident” at the Rose Bowl, but nothing concrete—nothing about Melvin or Karen or me.

  The two guns from the dead men are both 9mm—a Glock and a Ruger. Both magazines are full, each with fifteen rounds. They never got a shot off, which means the tall man is the probably the one who shot Melvin, firing from the passenger seat as they rolled up. Karen had described Sal as tall and big, with long hair, so I reason that the tall man who shot Melvin was Sal.

  I load Melvin’s 500 with rounds from the speed-loader, then put all of the guns under my seat and focus on breathing normally for another minute.

  Now what?

  I could gas up the Corolla and drive to LAPD headquarters and turn myself in. I haven’t heard anything about a warrant for my arrest for Zach, but it must be in the works. It has been an hour since the Pasadena FD arrived at the Rose Bowl, so they’re still in the early stages of processing the crime scene. It’s possible Melvin told someone he was going to meet me. He would be required to, of course, but I’ve known him to make exceptions when circumstances overrule the rule. Plus he told me he wouldn’t, and Melvin has never lied to me. Regardless, it won’t be long before somebody—Marsh, probably already—connects the dots to me and I won’t be able to move anywhere. An FBI agent has been shot, maybe killed, and every sworn officer in every jurisdiction everywhere will be out for blood.

  If I don’t turn myself in it won’t be long before I’m caught or shot on sight. And then I’m no use to Karen or anyone else. I have no idea what the FBI or LAPD knows about Karen, or Sal, or me. Even if I come in now, my arrest would take up valuable time—it would turn focus away from Karen, and who knows how much of my story the police would believe.