Kill the Messenger (3 page)

The car’s engine revved and the taillight disappeared from view. Predator was going home, calling it after a hard day of trying to kill people, Jace thought. Chills shook his body, from the rain and from relief. This time when he thought he was going to puke, he did.

Headlights flashed past on the street. Predator passed by, the big car growling like a panther as sirens whined in the distance.

Jace went back to the scene where his fallen mount lay, the rear wheel mangled beyond saving. If it were a horse, someone would shoot it, put it out of its misery. But it was a bike, and the frame was still intact. A miracle from God, Preacher John would have said. In his downtime between runs, Preacher John stood on the corner of Fourth and Flower in front of the upscale Bonaventure Hotel and recited the Bible for all those unfortunate enough to have to pass by him.

Jace didn’t believe in miracles. He’d caught a break. Two, considering he was still alive.

He looked around for his bag, but it was gone. Taken as a trophy by Predator, a consolation prize. Or maybe he thought he’d accomplished his true mission. Someone wanted whatever the hell was in Lenny Lowell’s packet, held tight against Jace’s belly by his bike shorts.

Whatever it was, Jace was going to find out. Lenny had a lot to answer for.

He picked up the bike, tilted it up onto the front wheel only, and started walking.

                      
      4

Don’t step on his brain,” Kev Parker warned. Kev Parker, forty-three, Detective 2, kicked down to one of the lesser divisions to finish out his career in disgrace and oblivion.

Renee Ruiz, his latest trainee, looked down at her stylish beige suede and leopard-print shoe. The spike heel was already stuck in a squishy gob of gray matter that had splattered some distance away from the body.

“Jesus Christ, Parker!” she squealed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just did.”

“I could have ruined my fucking shoe!”

“Yeah? Well, your fucking shoe is the least of your problems. And since you were standing behind a door when they handed out common sense, I’ll tell you again: Don’t wear stiletto heels on the job. You’re supposed to be a detective, not a hooker.”

Ruiz narrowed her eyes at him and spat a few choice words in Spanish.

Parker was unfazed. “You learn that from your mother?” he asked, his attention going to the body on the floor of the office.

Detective trainee Ruiz stepped wide of the mess to try to get in Parker’s face. “You gotta treat me with respect, Parker.”

“I will,” he said, not even glancing at her. The dead body had his undivided attention. Massive trauma to the head. Whoever killed this guy enjoyed his work. “When you deserve it,” he added.

Again with the Spanish.

Parker had been breaking in new detectives for going on four years, and this one was at the top of his shit list. He didn’t have a problem with women. He didn’t have a problem with Hispanics. He had a problem with attitude, and Renee Ruiz had attitude coming out of her pretty Jennifer Lopez–esque ass. Or she would have, if her skirt hadn’t been so damn tight. Parker had been working with her for less than a week and already he wanted to strangle her and throw her body into the La Brea tar pits.

“Are you paying attention here?” he said impatiently. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re at a homicide. There’s a dead guy on the floor and his head is bashed apart like a rotten cauliflower. What are you supposed to be doing instead of giving me shit about your shoes?”

Ruiz pouted. She was a knockout. A body that would turn any unsuspecting straight man with a pulse into a drooling idiot. Her lips were full and sexy. She outlined them in a color three shades darker than the shiny wet gloss she used to fill them in. The “Mall Mexican” look was the way Detective Kray described it.

Kray, another of their Homicide team, had problems with women
and
Hispanics, and blacks, and Jews, and every other definable ethnic group that wasn’t a stupid, racist, redneck cracker from Bumfuck, Louisiana—which was how Parker described Kray.

“Where’s your notebook?” he demanded. “You have to write everything down. And I mean
every thing.
You should have started writing the second you got this call. What time the call came, who told you what, what time you wedged your ass into that skirt and put on those ridiculous shoes. What time you arrived at the crime scene, who you spoke to first, what you saw when you came in the front door, what you saw when you came into this room. Position of the body, location of the murder weapon, which way his brain splattered and how far the pieces flew, whether or not his fly is open. Every damn thing in sight.

“You leave something out and I can guarantee you some dirtbag defense attorney will get you on the stand and ask you about that one seemingly insignificant item, and he’ll unravel the DA’s case like a cheap sweater. The worst two words in the English language, babe:
reasonable doubt.
”

Parker refused to call her “Detective” Ruiz one second before she had her shield in hand. She was not his peer, and he would remind her in subtle and not-so-subtle ways every day of her training period. He didn’t have control over a hell of a lot in his job, but for the time he was partnered with Ruiz, he had at least the illusion of control over her.

“And measure the distances,” he said. “If you find a booger on the carpet, I want to know exactly where it is in relation to the body. Put the exact measurements in your personal notes, approximate measurements in the notes you’ll take to court. If you put your exact measurements in your official notes and your measurements don’t match the criminalists’ to the millimeter, you’ll have a defense attorney all over you like a bad rash.”

Ruiz came back with the attitude. “You’re lead. It’s your case. Why don’t you do the scut work, Parker?”

“I will,” Parker said. “I sure as hell am not trusting you to do it right. But you’ll do it too, so when the next vic comes along and you get the lead, you at least look like you know what you’re doing.”

He looked around the room cluttered with crap and crime-scene geeks. One of the uniforms who had answered the initial call stood by the front door, logging in every person who entered the scene. The other one—older, heavy-set, and balding—was on the other side of the room, pointing out to one of the geeks something he thought might be significant evidence. Jimmy Chewalski. Jimmy was good people. He talked too much, but he was a good cop. Everyone called him Jimmy Chew.

Ruiz looked right through the crime-scene techs and the uniforms. Having passed the written detective exam, she now considered herself above them. Never mind that she had been in a uniform herself not that long ago, she was now a princess among the lowly hired help. To Ruiz, Jimmy Chew (Choo) was a pair of fuck-me shoes.

Parker made his way over to the officer, leaving Ruiz to figure out how to bend down and look at evidence without flashing her ass to everyone at the scene.

“Jimmy, where’s the coroner’s investigator?” Parker asked, stepping gingerly around the body, careful to miss a sheaf of papers that were strewn on the floor. The coroner’s investigator had the first dance. No one could so much as check the dead body’s pockets until the CI had finished his or her business.

“Could be a while,” Chewalski said. “She’s helping out at a murder-suicide.”

“Nicholson?”

“Yeah. Some guy blew away his wife and two kids ’cause the wife brought home a bucket of regular KFC instead of extra-crispy. Then he goes in his bathroom and blows his head off. I heard the scene was so bad, the detectives had to take umbrellas in the bathroom with them. Most of the guy’s face ended up on the ceiling. And, as we all know, what goes up must come down. I heard an eyeball dropped and hit Kray in the head.”

Parker chuckled. “Too bad he couldn’t have scooped up some of the gray matter. Then at least he’d have half a brain.”

Chew grinned. “That guy’s head is so far up his ass, it’s popped back out of his shoulders again. He’s a fucking French knot.”

Parker turned his attention to the dead body again. “So what’s the story here?”

Chew rolled his eyes. “Well, Kev, we have here dead on the floor an unlamented scum-sucking member of the bar.”

“Now, Jimmy, just because a man was a soulless, amoral asshole doesn’t mean he deserved to be murdered.”

“Excuse me? Who’s in charge here?”

Parker swiveled his head around to see a pretty twenty-something brunette in a smart Burberry trench coat standing three feet away, near the hall to the back door.

“That would be me. Detective Parker. And you are?”

Unsmiling, she looked directly at him with steady dark eyes, then at Officer Chewalski. “Abby Lowell. The scum-sucking member of the bar, the soulless, amoral asshole lying dead on the floor, is my father. Leonard Lowell.”

                      
      5

Jimmy Chew made a sound like he had been impaled with something. Parker took it on the chin with just a hint of a flinch around his eyes. He pulled his hat off and offered his hand to Abby Lowell. She looked at it like she figured he never washed after going to the john.

“My condolences for your loss, Ms. Lowell,” Parker said. “I’m sorry you heard that.”

She arched a perfect brow. “But not sorry you said it?”

“It wasn’t personal. I’m sure it’s no surprise to you how cops feel about defense attorneys.”

“No, it’s not,” she said. Her voice was a strong, slightly hoarse alto that would serve her well in a courtroom. The withering gaze never wavered. She had yet to look at her father’s body. She kept her chin up, Parker thought, to avoid seeing him. “I’m in law school myself. Just so you can get a head start coming up with new and different derogatory ways to describe me.”

“I can assure you, we treat every homicide the same, Ms. Lowell. Regardless of who or what the victim was.”

“That doesn’t instill much confidence, Detective.”

“I have an eighty-six-percent clearance rate.”

“And what happened to the other fourteen percent?”

“I’m still working them. I’ll work them ’til they’re cleared. I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care if by the time I close those cases the perps are hunchbacked old men and I have to chase them down with a walker,” Parker said. “There’s not a homicide cop in this town better than me.”

“Then why aren’t you working with us, Parker?”

Bradley Kyle, Detective 2 with Robbery-Homicide—LAPD’s glamour squad, bastion of hotshots and arrogant assholes. Parker knew this firsthand because he had once been one of them, and a more arrogant, hotshot jerk had never walked the halls of Parker Center. In those days he had been fond of saying the building had been named for him. Stardom was his destiny. The memory bubbled up inside him now like a case of acid reflux, burning and bitter.

Parker scowled at Kyle moving toward him. “What is this? A party? And how did your name get on the guest list, Bradley? Or are you just out slumming?”

Kyle ignored him and started looking around the crime scene. His partner, a big guy with no neck, a blond flattop, and horn-rimmed glasses, spoke to no one as he made notes. Parker watched them for a moment, a bad feeling coiling in his gut. Robbery-Homicide didn’t just show up at a murder out of curiosity. They worked the high-profile cases, like O.J., like Robert Blake, like Rob Cole—LA’s celebrity killer du jour.

“Don’t piss on my crime scene,
Bradley.
” Parker emphasized the name, dragged it out, knowing Kyle hated it. He wanted to be called Kyle—or at the worst, Brad. Bradley was a name for an interior decorator or a hairstylist, not a kick-ass detective.

Kyle glanced at him. “Who says it’s yours?”

“My beat, my call, my murder,” Parker said, moving toward the younger detective.

Kyle ignored him and squatted down to look at the apparent murder weapon—an old bowling trophy, now encrusted in blood and decorated with Lenny Lowell’s hair and a piece of his scalp.

Kyle had been on his way up in Robbery-Homicide while Parker was being driven out. He was at the top of his game now and eating up the spotlight every time he got the chance, which was too often.

He was a good-looking guy, good face for television, a tan so perfect it had to have been airbrushed on him. He had an athletic build, but he was on the slight side, and touchy about it. Made a point of telling people he was five eleven and a half, like he’d knock anyone on their ass for making something of it. Parker, who was himself a hair under six feet, figured Kyle for five nine and not a fraction more.

Parker squatted down beside him. “What are you doing here?” he asked quietly. “What’s Robbery-Homicide doing cruising the murder of a low-rent mouthpiece like Lenny Lowell?”

“We go where they send us. Isn’t that right, Moosie?” Kyle tossed a look at his partner. Moose grunted and kept on making notes.

“What are you saying?” Parker asked. “Are you saying you’re taking this? Why? It won’t even make the paper. This guy’s clients were scumbags and dirtballs.”

Kyle pretended not to have heard him, and stood up. Ruiz stood a scant few inches away from him. In her ridiculous heels she was almost at eye level with him.

“Detective Kyle,” she purred in a hot phone-sex voice as she offered her hand. “Detective Renee Ruiz. I want your job.”

This in the same tone she might have used to say “I want you inside me,” not that Parker had any desire to find out. He stood up and gave the dead eyes to his partner. “
Trainee
Ruiz, have you finished diagramming the crime scene?”

She huffed a petulant sigh at Parker, then tossed a sexy look at Kyle and walked away like a woman who knew a guy was watching her ass.

“Forget it, Kyle,” Parker said. “She’d grind you up like lunch meat. Besides, she’s too tall for you.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” Abby Lowell joined them. “If I might intrude on your little game of who has the biggest dick—” She offered her hand to Kyle, all business. “Abby Lowell. The victim is—was—my father.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Lowell.”

“You’re with Robbery-Homicide,” she said. “I recognize you from the news.”

“Yes.” Kyle looked as pleased as a second-rate dinner-theater actor thinking he was about to be asked for his autograph.

Parker expected Abby Lowell to say “Thank God you’re here.” Instead, she looked Kyle square in the eyes and said: “Why are you here?”

Kyle gave her the poker face. “Excuse me?”

“Come on, Detective. I’ve been around my father’s business all my life. His clients and their accused crimes should be way below your radar. What do you think happened here? Do you know something I don’t?”

“A man was murdered. We’re homicide cops. Do you know something
I
don’t? What do
you
think happened here?”

Abby Lowell took in the mess as if seeing it for the first time since she had entered the room: the files and paperwork everywhere, the overturned chair, maybe from a struggle, maybe from a ransacking after the murder.

Parker watched her carefully, thinking there was a whole lot stirring beneath the thin facade of calm. He could see it in her eyes, in the slight tremor of her lips. Fear, shock, the struggle to control her emotions. She kept her arms crossed tight, holding herself, keeping her hands from shaking. She was very careful not to look at the floor in front of her.

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “Maybe a disgruntled client, maybe a family member of a victim in a case Lenny won. Maybe someone wanted something here Lenny didn’t want to give up.”

Her gaze landed on a credenza at the far side of her father’s desk. A cube-shaped black safe that was maybe two feet square squatted in the cabinet, the door open. “He kept cash in that safe.”

“Did you check the safe, Parker?” Kyle asked, the Man In Charge.

Parker turned to Jimmy Chew. “Jimmy, did you look in that safe when you got here?”

“Why, yes, Detective Parker, I did,” Chew said with false formality. He didn’t so much as glance at Kyle. “When my partner and I arrived at nineteen hundred hours and fourteen minutes, we first secured the scene and called in Homicide. While looking around the office, my partner observed the safe was open and that it appeared to contain only documents, which we did not examine.”

“No cash?” Parker asked.

“No, sir. No money. Not in plain sight anyway.”

“I know there was money,” Abby Lowell said with an edge in her voice. “A lot of Lenny’s clients preferred to pay him in cash.”

“There’s a surprise,” Jimmy Chew muttered, retreating.

“He never had less than five thousand dollars in that safe—usually more. He kept it in a bank bag.”

“Was your father having problems with any of his clients?” Kyle asked.

“He didn’t talk to me about his clients, Detective Kyle. Even scum-sucking dirtbag attorneys have their ethics.”

“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise, Ms. Lowell. I apologize on behalf of the department if anyone here may have given you that impression. I’m sure your father had ethics.”

And he probably kept them in a jar at the back of a cupboard, next to the pickled onions and some ten-year-old canned salmon, never to be opened, Parker thought. He’d seen Lenny Lowell at work in the courtroom. Short on scruples
and
ethics, Lowell would have impugned the testimony of his own mother if it meant getting an acquittal.

“We’ll need to see his client records,” Kyle said.

“Sure. As soon as someone rewrites the Constitution,” Abby Lowell returned. “That information is privileged.”

“A list of his clients, then.”

“I’m a student, not stupid. Unless a judge tells me I have to, you get nothing confidential out of this office.”

Color began to creep upward from Kyle’s starched white collar. “Do you want us to solve your father’s murder, Ms. Lowell? Or is there some reason you’d rather we didn’t?”

“Of course I want it solved,” she snapped. “But I also know that I now have to look out for my father’s clients and for the best interest of his practice. If I just hand over privileged information, that could open my father’s estate to lawsuits, compromise ongoing cases, and could very well keep me from my chosen profession. I don’t want to be disbarred before I even take the bar exam, Detective Kyle. This has to be done by the book.”

“You don’t need to compromise yourself, Ms. Lowell. Names and addresses aren’t privileged,” Parker said calmly, pulling her attention away from Kyle. “And it’s not necessary for us to access your father’s files. The criminal records of his clients are readily available. When was the last time you spoke with your father?”

He saw more value in trying to get Abby Lowell on his side than in bullying her into an adversarial position. She wasn’t some weak, hysterical woman, terrified of the police, which was what Kyle wanted her to be. She had already dug in her heels, put a chip on her shoulder, and dared him to knock it off.

She rubbed a slightly trembling manicured hand across her forehead and let a slightly shaky sigh escape, showing a tiny crack in the armor. “I spoke with Lenny around six-thirty. We were supposed to meet for dinner at Cicada. I got there early, had a drink, called him on my cell phone. He said he might be a little late,” she said, her voice tightening, her dark eyes filling. She blinked the tears back. “He said he was waiting for a bike messenger to pick something up.”

“Did he say what?”

“No.”

“Late in the day to call a messenger.”

She shrugged. “Probably something he needed to get to a client.”

“Do you know what service he used?”

“Whichever could pick up and deliver the fastest and the cheapest.”

“If we can find out which service, their dispatch office will have the address the package was going to, maybe a vague description of what was in it, and the name of the messenger they sent,” Parker said. “Do you know if the messenger ever arrived?”

“No. I told you, when I last spoke with Lenny, he was waiting.”

Parker glanced over at the safe, frowning.

“That would be stupid,” she said, reading his mind. “Like you said, his dispatch office will have the messenger’s name.”

Which could very well not be real, Parker thought. Bike messengers weren’t known for being stable, family types. They tended to be loners, oddballs, living a hand-to-mouth existence. The way they raced the downtown streets—balls-out, no fear for life or limb, no regard for themselves or anyone else—it wasn’t a stretch to imagine more than one of them was hopped up on something.

So some down-on-his-luck junkie messenger shows up for a package, gets a look in Lowell’s open safe, decides to elevate his social standing, kills Lowell, takes the money, and vanishes into the night, never to be seen again. The guy could be on a bus to Vegas while they stood around talking about it.

“It’s not my job to draw conclusions, Ms. Lowell. I have to consider all possibilities.

“Who called 911?” he asked, turning again to Jimmy Chew.

“The ever-popular anonymous citizen.”

“Anything around here open or inhabited?”

“Not on a night like this. There’s a 76 station and a bail-bonds place down the street, on the other side. And the 24/7 Laundromat.”

“Go see if anyone at the Laundromat has anything to say.”

“They’re closed.”

“I thought you said it was called 24/7.”

“It’s raining,” Chew said, incredulous. “Me and Stevie cruised past around six-fifteen. The place was locked up tight. Besides, they quit being open twenty-four after their night clerk was robbed and raped six, eight months ago.”

Kyle smirked. “Great neighborhood you work, Parker.”

“Killers are killers, no matter what neighborhood you’re in, Bradley,” Parker said. “The only difference is, you can’t make the news off the murders here.”

He turned back to Abby Lowell. “How were you notified of your father’s death, Ms. Lowell?”

She looked at him like she thought he might be pulling something on her. “One of the officers called.”

Parker looked at Chew, who held up his hands in denial, then looked at Chew’s partner, who shook his head.

“Someone called you. On your cell phone,” Parker said.

Abby Lowell’s eyes bounced from one man to another, uncertain. “Yes. Why?”

“What did the caller say to you?”

“That my father had been killed, and could I please come to his office. Why?”

“May I see your cell phone?”

“I don’t understand,” she said, hesitantly pulling her phone out of a pocket in her trench coat.

“LAPD wouldn’t tell you something like that over the phone, Ms. Lowell,” Parker said. “An officer or detective would have come to your residence to give you the news.”

Her eyes widened as the implication sank in. “Are you telling me I was on the phone with my father’s killer?”

“What time did you get the call?”

“Maybe twenty minutes ago. I was at the restaurant.”

“Do you have a call list on that thing?” Parker asked, nodding toward the phone she clutched in her hand.