City of Echoes (29 page)

The twine snapped free.

Matt’s body sprung back onto the floor. He turned and stared at his wrists in disbelief, then jumped to his feet and ran for the door. The stairs were completely engulfed in flames, the fire turning yellow and red and beginning to climb up the walls. He could feel a breeze from the greenhouse behind his back, the smoke venting up to the second floor, the heat overwhelming.

Without a moment lost, he filled his lungs with air and held his breath, then raced through the flames to the end of the hall and the doorway he believed would lead him into the sunroom.

He found her here.

She was lying on a couch in the fetal position, the room filled with smoke. Her eyes were closed. Baylor had used tape to cover her mouth and bind her arms and legs behind her back. Matt couldn’t be sure but thought that her blouse looked as if it had been disturbed. Images began to surface, brief glimpses whizzing by. The break-in at Laura’s house, the footprints he found on the carpet leading to her bedroom, the night he caught Orlando hiding in the darkness, peeping at Laura through the kitchen window.

Matt picked Laura up in his arms, her body limp and lifeless. He tried to keep himself together, and rushed for the bank of glass doors opening to a small pool and the backyard. But when he tried to turn the handle, the door wouldn’t budge. None of them would. He tried each one. He could see the dead bolts, the kind of locks often found on glass doors that required keys from inside and out. The glass looked as though it might be an inch thick, and he didn’t see anything in the smoke-filled room that he could use to break it.

His eyes darted through the doorway into the hall, the stairway consumed by the blaze. He could feel time racing by, and he could see and hear those gas jets hissing away in his mind again.

He pulled Laura’s face against his chest and bolted through the flames. The hallway seemed endless. By the time he reached the greenhouse, Laura’s hair was on fire, his jeans were burning, and Grace and Orlando were still huddled behind the wall, shooting their pistols into the front yard.

Matt lowered Laura onto the worktable, frantically hosing her down and finally himself. Her eyes were opening. He could see the confusion on her face, then fear as she heard the gunshots and seemed to remember where she was. Matt removed the tape from her mouth, freed her arms and legs, and held her face in his hands.

“Are you okay?” he said to her. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “I think so.”

He turned and checked the yard. The body bag had been dumped on the lawn, and Grace and Orlando were pinned down and backstepping their way toward the greenhouse.

He met Laura’s eyes. “You need to get underneath the table,” he said. “You need to hide. If you see a way to make it outside, take it. They’ve turned on the gas upstairs, do you understand?”

She nodded again, still groggy.

Matt helped her slide beneath the table, saw Grace and Orlando making a run for the greenhouse, and slipped into the shadows, where he hoped that he would be invisible.

He watched them carefully. Orlando ejecting a mag and drawing another from his pocket; Grace with that twisted look in his eyes but now overwhelmed by the moment and whimpering—both of them together, both of them cornered.

Orlando entered the greenhouse first, firing three deafening shots into the darkness. Grace made it halfway in before he stumbled and fell on the floor.

And that’s when Matt swung the shovel and smashed Orlando in the face.

It was a hard, crushing blow, and the big man collapsed on impact.

Matt worked quickly, stripping him of his pistol, rolling him over, and lifting the .45 out from beneath the detective’s belly. When he looked back at Grace, he saw the lieutenant sitting on the floor staring at his gun. His face was bathed in rays of moonlight. He had a sparkle in his eyes, that lost, spooky glint, as if he were all alone in a world far, far away. And he was sweating again, the shakes had returned. Even more, he was weeping. After a moment he stuffed the Glock into his mouth and clamped his eyes shut.

Gunshots sprayed into the greenhouse, the shattered glass raining down on them like jagged shards of hail, but Grace didn’t seem to notice.

Matt looked through the French doors toward the lawn and saw Cabrera and McKensie moving in behind five members of a SWAT team, dressed in black uniforms and helmets with their rifles raised.

“Hold your fire,” he shouted. “Hold your fire.”

He turned back to Grace. His eyes remained shut, the gun wobbling in his mouth, like he couldn’t find enough courage to pull the trigger. Diving across the aisle, Matt grabbed hold of the lieutenant’s hand and struggled to pull the pistol away.

“Do you really think that I’m gonna let you take the easy way out, Grace? Give me the fucking gun. Give it to me. You’re gonna own up to what you did. You’re going national. You’re going public. You’re gonna burn.”

Grace moaned, the muzzle banging against his teeth. Matt was surprised by the man’s strength as they wrestled for control of the weapon nose to nose. When Grace opened his hollow gray eyes, Matt took the shock and couldn’t help thinking that he had pulled the last veil away and could look all the way in. He could see the disease, the insanity, the final break. As he gazed past the glint, he could see the chasm.

The man who had lost his soul. The man who thought that murdering an eighteen-year-old girl and burying her body in the desert was the final answer, the ultimate solution. A righteous act that would bring him back into the light.

LAPD lieutenant Bob Grace.

The man who had already been responsible for the deaths of six people and murdered five of them to keep his secret. Ron Harris, Leo Rodriguez, Kevin Hughes, Frankie Lane, Jamie Taladyne, and Dr. George Baylor.

Matt wrenched the gun out of Grace’s mouth just as the lieutenant pulled the trigger. Three rounds burst over their heads, through the glass and into the sky. Then he slammed the back of Grace’s head into the wall and spoke in a low, dark voice that had heat to it.

“Fuck you, Grace. Is it cutting through, you sick son of a bitch? Fuck you.”

He smashed the lieutenant’s head against the wall a second time, then turned as he noticed the flashlights. The SWAT team officers were rushing into the greenhouse with their rifles still raised. His eyes flicked past them until he spotted Cabrera and McKensie with their pistols drawn. Cabrera hurried over and knelt down, taking in his shoulder, the bandage and wound. As the SWAT team’s flashlights swept over the makeshift operating table, Cabrera appeared to zero in on the surgical instruments and the two IV bags, still hanging from the irrigation pipes. When he turned back, he spoke in a quiet voice filled with new concern.

“Did Baylor do this to you, Matt? Are you okay?”

Matt met his partner’s eyes. “Orlando turned on the gas,” he said. “The place is gonna blow.”

Cabrera nodded and helped him up, then turned as Laura crawled out from beneath the table. Matt watched his partner take her hand and guide her through the French doors. When McKensie handcuffed Grace and dragged him away, Matt couldn’t help but notice the satisfaction showing on his face. The SWAT team leader was giving the fire a last look, his men backing out ahead of him. Matt started to follow them but stopped when he remembered Orlando. Searching through the darkness, he found him on the other side of the table. He was just starting to move, just coming to. He helped the man get to his feet, pushed him outside, and made a run for the wall by the lake. But then his eyes danced across the lawn and landed on the body bag. He rushed over and grabbed it, dragging the girl across the grass until he reached the others.

The sunroom was fully engulfed in flames, and the windows were beginning to shatter and drop from the second floor. Several moments passed before Matt heard what he thought might be a scream from inside the house. He looked over at Cabrera. Then McKensie broke in with his gravelly voice.

“What the hell was that?”

Matt turned back to the house, staring at the fire. At first he wasn’t sure if what he’d heard had been human. From the pitch and tone, it could have been a dog trapped inside somewhere. Perhaps Baylor had a pet after all.

But then he heard it again. A shriek. A human being.

It sounded like Joey Orlando, but how could it be? Matt had helped him up, or at least thought he had. He could remember pushing him through the doorway from behind. He could remember becoming distracted when he saw the body bag on the lawn.

His eyes swept over the faces of everyone huddled behind the wall. Orlando wasn’t here. He wasn’t with them. And then a thought surfaced. Something horrible. Something worse than horrible. He looked at the twine still wrapped around his wrists. He studied it closely and suddenly felt the ice-cold hand of death grab his spine and shake it.

There were no ragged edges. There was no way that the twine had been pulled apart in the heat of the moment. Instead, it had been a clean cut. The kind of cut a pair of gardening shears would have made.

Laura grasped his arm. “What is it, Matt? What’s happened?”

He shook his head back and forth, still trying to comprehend. “Baylor,” he whispered.

“What’s happened?”

“He’s alive.”

He heard Orlando let out another horrific shriek and watched as the fire moved through the greenhouse. He could feel the churning in his gut as he gazed at the gruesome sight and waited for Orlando to stop howling in agony.

And then the gas finally ignited. The air cracked, and as Matt reached for Laura and ducked below the wall, he could hear a sharp clapping sound and feel the concussion. It seemed like the fireball was consuming the entire yard, eating into the homes on both sides of the property and rising all the way up to the stars. Matt traded another look with Cabrera and McKensie, then turned back to Laura and shielded her with his body. The inferno had burned away the night, and all of a sudden it was as bright as lunchtime on a hot summer day. He could feel the fire scorching the top of his head and rolling over his back into the lake. He could hear the sighs of relief as the flames ebbed away from the wall. And as he caught his breath, as he felt Laura rub her thumb over his palm, he could see the girl in the body bag waking up and beginning to move.

CHAPTER 51

The drive from the hospital to Laura’s house didn’t really register. It was after 9:00 p.m., and Matt sat in the passenger seat looking at her face and thinking about the five days he’d just spent laid up in bed with another handful of IVs in his arm. The examinations of his body and the bullet wound appeared endless. At a certain point he began to believe that the doctors were less interested in his well-being than their own standing. It seemed clear by the way they were acting that the procedure Dr. Baylor had performed in his greenhouse was the work of a very gifted surgeon. It seemed clear to Matt that the doctors examining him were looking for a way to find fault with the operation but couldn’t, and now were taking it out on him with a barrage of senseless tests.

There had been only one break. A break taken in spite of his doctor’s protest.

A two-hour stretch a couple of days ago when he left the medical center to attend the funerals of Kevin Hughes and his partner, Frankie Lane. They were buried side by side, under the watchful eyes of pretty much every law enforcement officer from every agency in the region who wasn’t on duty. The fire department had shown up with a long line of fire engines and emergency vehicles. The mayor, along with every member of the city council, three members of the House, a US senator, and hundreds of onlookers were at the cemetery as well.

Matt and Cabrera had joined Lieutenant McKensie, Deputy Chief Albert Ramsey, and LAPD chief Richard S. Logan to stand by Laura’s side, while the archbishop of Los Angeles, Francis Joseph Anastasio, led the ceremony. Now, as he sat in the passenger seat watching her exit off the 134 Freeway and make the climb into the hills above Glendale, Matt couldn’t believe how well she had handled herself. What he imagined would have been the most personal and private of moments—a funeral service for her husband—had become a media event open to the public and recorded by a sea of cameras. But even beyond Laura’s inner strength, beyond the archbishop’s heartfelt words about peace and love, beyond the loss and sadness, the pain and finality, what struck Matt most about the service was the look he saw on almost everyone’s face.

The shock that three police officers—Grace, Orlando, and Plank—three decorated officers had strayed so far off the mark. The disbelief Matt had overheard in one conversation after the next that they were here in this cemetery to pay their respects and bury two men who had been betrayed and murdered by three of their own.

As Matt read accounts of their crimes in the newspaper from his hospital room, as he watched the story unfold on TV, including an interview with Sally Rodriguez, the wife of Grace’s partner, who’d taken the news of his betrayal particularly hard, he’d had the same feeling. It was almost as if the air had been sucked out of the city and for five long days everyone was still holding their breath.

Laura pulled into the drive. The house was dark, and they walked around the garage to the kitchen. After unlocking the door, she switched on the lights and then, as if on automatic pilot, began to pour a glass of wine.

“You want something?” she said.

Matt shook her off. “I’m okay.”

He could tell that she had something she wanted to talk about. He could see the worry in her eyes, the same worry he’d noticed as they left the medical center at USC.

“When are they gonna know?” she said finally.

“Know what?”

“Who was in the house. The man who screamed.”

“They already know. It was Joey Orlando. I heard his voice. You’re safe, Laura. He’s gone. I promise.”

She sipped her wine, her eyes still on him. “I know,” she said. “But when will they have proof?”

“Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after.”

Matt understood why she needed a definitive answer—Orlando’s fixation on her and his odd behavior were more than obvious—but the fire had burned so hot that investigators couldn’t get in until late last night. As he’d been told during his initial debriefing by a Lieutenant Clyde Rayburn from Internal Affairs, the case had been taken downtown and split between the Robbery-Homicide Division and IA. While answers would probably begin filtering in tomorrow, Matt knew that he and Cabrera were on leave and out of the loop. It was only a guess, but he imagined that processing the crime scene in a high-profile case like this one could go on for another week or two.