Vampyres of Hollywood (20 page)

Peter just stared at me. I couldn’t tell if he bought my story or not, but he didn’t say anything.

“I made a terrible mistake not telling you, and Thomas paid for it with his life. Oh God, Peter, what do I do now?”

He came around to stand in front of me, dangerously close. I could smell the blood on him, just hours old, mingling with his own heat, and I was starting to get aroused. There’s nothing like giving a good performance to get my juices going. I averted my eyes and turned my head to the side, just in case the blood vessels in my eyes started to burst and give me away. “Will they strike again?” I asked, pitching my voice to little more than a whisper.

“Yes,” he said finally, after a long pause. “On the face of what we’ve seen so far, I am afraid they will.”

“What do we do?” I whispered.

“There are three things we do—right now,” he said quickly. “First, we make sure that both your alibis are watertight, so even if I’m removed from the case, we know you’re both safe from accusations. Second, we have to ensure your safety, because I’m afraid either you or Maral could be next on their list of victims.”

“And third?”

“The third isn’t ‘we’ Ovsanna. It’s me, by myself. I’ve got to find the killer.”

BEVERLY HILLS
10:25
A.M.

I work in one of the all-time great office buildings in Beverly Hills, certainly the best piece of architecture housing any police department I’ve ever seen. Like every great building, it’s got different moods and atmospheres—but for me, my favorite view is mid-morning, when the sun washes the blue, green, and gold tiles on the dome of City Hall. Then it looks incredibly dramatic, almost foreign to L.A. It reminds me of that turn on the 101 in the Bay Area where suddenly the entire San Francisco skyline is laid out in a dramatic vista. It’s breathtaking and heart-stoppingly gorgeous. You’d have to be dead not to revel in the glory of it. Well, the Beverly Hills Civic Center isn’t quite that glorious, but it’s still great to look at.

It’s a stunning example of Spanish Renaissance architecture, originally designed in 1932 by William Gage. But by the late seventies it was way too small and of course, it wasn’t earthquake safe. Instead of letting it go, the city held a blind bid contest among the top six architects of the time, committing to a ten-year renovation for a hundred and ten million dollars. When people tell me that L.A. has no soul I remind them about that: one hundred and ten million dollars to preserve a building less than a hundred years old. Frank Gehry lost out to Charles Moore, who said he was going to build “a place that is distinguishable in mind and memory from all other places.” It’s one of my favorite quotes because, for me, he wasn’t just talking about the building; he was describing L.A. in general and Hollywood in particular. I think he succeeded. The civic center with its cop shop is pure L.A. Quintessential Hollywood, and like the famous sign, it’s even featured in the movies:
Beverly Hills Cop
and
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
.

The department lives up to the building. We’ve got first-class equipment, up-to-date technology;
damn,
even the beat cops’ uniforms look good. It’s a good place to work and it’s not a job I want to jeopardize. I knew my father called in several favors just to get me this job and I knew, as I climbed the steps to the double doors, that I was dangerously close to blowing it. I wasn’t getting results fast enough for the brass to appease the press and the politicians. That cracking sound I heard in the background was the thin ice I was skating on.

I’d had XM radio installed in the Jag, so I alternated listening to CNN and the local talk radio stations as I drove over from Bel Air. CNN had a piece on the morning’s killings, but it was pretty straightforward reporting. The talk stations, however, were heavy with commentary. Most of the deejays were buying my suggestion that the latest multiple murders didn’t fit the profile of the Cinema Slayer but were drug related instead. Rough Trade’s specialty had been leaked to the media by
a source close to the investigation
—me, in other words—and its reputation bolstered that theory. Bloody death, drugs, multiple murder in an S&M club, it didn’t sound like the Cinema Slayer. The three dead actors weren’t mentioned, and no one was talking about Eva Casale. We hadn’t released any specifics about her murder, but we had her ex-junkie lover in custody so, as far as the media was concerned, that case was old news. This was one of those times when the attention span of the MTV generation was a definite advantage.

It’s a cliché that police captains are white haired or ruddy faced or Irish. Captain Barton isn’t Irish. He’s got a beautiful head of white hair, though, and enough red veins on his nose and cheeks to ensure a second career as Santa at Nordstrom if he wants it. Fortunately for the department, he hasn’t wanted it yet. He’s a good man to work for: bright, fair, driven, more politician than police, more bureaucrat than badge, with a Ph.D. in criminology, speaks six languages, and has been married to the same woman for twenty-five years. Two of his five kids are training to be cops.

He’s second generation on the job—his dad and mine were rookies together back when the Two Tonys killed Bugsy Siegel on Linden Drive—and he’s worked his way up from the beat to captain without making a lot of enemies. No one knows Hollywood politics better than Barton. He’s a damn good administrator, but he can be a pain in my ass sometimes. I had a feeling, when I got the note on my desk saying he wanted to see me, that this was going to be one of them.

We met in his glass-walled office, with its window looking out onto Rexford. It’s a fabulous view—if you like palm trees and traffic…and if you look closely you can see where the acid smog has pitted the bulletproof glass. A metaphor for something, I’m sure—maybe pollution will get us before firepower—but no one’s paying attention. The Captain was concentrating on a series of printed e-mails spread out across his desk. I didn’t even need to look at them as I sat down to know that they were from me. They changed colors ever so slightly as the lights on the miniature Christmas tree in the corner of the room twinkled on and off.

“Good work, Peter. Excellent work,” he said in that peculiar clipped fashion of his. His praise took me by surprise, immediately putting me on guard. “Good, solid police work.”

There was something coming.

“But it’s not enough.”

Barton pulled out a pair of rimless glasses from his top drawer—I glimpsed pens sorted by color—and glanced at the e-mailed reports.

“I’ve got the higher-ups breathing down my neck for results. You haven’t got anything on the first three murders, we’re no closer to solving the Casale case, and now we’ve got this mess from this morning. I can’t go out there and talk to
anyone
with what little you’ve got. This isn’t going to cut it.”

“That’s unfair, Captain. I think I’ve accomplished quite a bit, given that I was only assigned this case yesterday morning. I was promised a task force, resources, an office. I’m still filling in the requisition forms.”

“These crimes were always a priority, but obviously the murder yesterday and the killings this morning have changed all that. Your team is being assembled now.”

“I wanted to pick my own team,” I mumbled.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped, sounding like a disapproving parent. “You’ll take what we give you.” He looked back at the report. “I made you lead on the Cinema Slayer trio, but the murder yesterday and the massacre this morning changes all that. You’ll work with Milmore, Long, and Delaney.”

I kept my face straight: Larry, Curly, and Moe. Well, at least he wasn’t turning it over to Homicide Special yet. Actually, John Milmore, Jake Long, and Del Delaney are all good cops and I’ve worked with each one on other cases.

Barton opened the first murder book on his desk and started reading from it. “We have two separate murder scenes within the past twenty-four hours which, conceivably, could have been committed by the same person or persons unknown.” Without lifting his head, he looked at me over the rim of his glasses. “Nine bodies were taken out of this Rough Trade club. Six men, three women,” he added, as if it made a difference. “We seem to be missing some body parts, which suggests that the killer or killers took said parts away, maybe a trophy of their kill. The ME is having trouble making sense of the scene.”

Our medical examiner is one of the best in the country. “I don’t understand. What can’t he figure out?”

“There were teeth marks on some of the bodies.”

“Teeth marks?” I blinked, and then shrugged. Why was I even surprised? I’m not squeamish, but I could feel my stomach start to gurgle. “A cannibal killer…the press will love that.”

“The ME doesn’t think they’re human. Said at first glance they look canine. Or maybe feline—but big.
Big
. If it’s a cat, it’s a zoo animal—jaguar, panther, tiger, something like that—definitely not a pussycat. He’s making casts of the marks to identify them.”

“What about the weapons used?”

“None, according to the coroner. No guns, knives, clubs…everyone was killed by hand.” He moved a buff-colored envelope of photographs across the desk toward me. I’d seen everything up close that morning, but these photos showed the minutest details. I closed the envelope and pushed it away. These were images they wouldn’t even use in
Saw III
. “Most of the traumatic injuries were made postmortem. Except for the people who were ripped apart. ME says they were alive when that happened. Something to do with the spray of the arterial blood. Oh, and we got an ID on another one of the vics. Kid named Neville Travis. I think this is what’s left of him.” The Captain pulled the top photo out of the folder and handed it back to me. It showed an arm resting three feet away from a mangled torso. They’d been jaggedly severed at the shoulder. No wonder I hadn’t recognized Travis at the scene; there was no flesh left on his face. “Are you suggesting an ordinary human did that—without any weapons?”

“Hardly an ordinary human,” Barton said mildly. “But then, the people who frequent these clubs aren’t exactly ordinary, are they? I mean I don’t see my next-door neighbors walking in there. These are precisely the type of people who give this city a bad name. A TV weather girl—what was she doing in a place like that? I got my weather from her every morning, for God’s sake!” He sounded personally affronted.

“We ID’d a judge and a pastor in there, too,” I reminded him.

“Well,
that
I can believe,” he said dismissively, and I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the pastor or the judge or both. “A place like that, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that there were animals there. Bestiality, you know. Makes me think about Catherine the Great.” Before I could ask the obvious question, he hurried on. “Did you know,” he said, leaning forward, “that there are more big cats in private hands in the United States than there are in the rest of the wild? More tigers in America than in all of India?”

“I didn’t know that, Captain.” Captain Barton was a practicing Methodist. Where was he getting this stuff?

“Neither did I until this morning.” He hit a couple of keys on his computer and I could see a garish Web site reflected on the window behind his desk. “According to
HollywoodGossip.com
, some sort of drug-fueled orgy was going on in that place. Men, women, and animals. Or at least one animal, maybe a gorilla. The party got out of hand; someone went berserk, starting killing people. The animal got excited and started chewing on the bones—”

“Whoa, Captain, I was there. That’s just so much bull—”

“I guarantee you, Detective, that’s what’s going to be reported as honest-to-god truth on the noon news. There’ll even be a gorilla sighting in Beverly Hills.” His lips curled in what might have been a smile and I realized why he was probably going to be mayor someday.

“I’d believe a gorilla in Beverly Hills,” I said.

“And this department will make no comment. None,” he added for emphasis.

“I hear you. I’m not talking to anyone.”

“This town has a short attention span. Let the news stations get excited and run with it. It buys us time. Let’s move on for a moment.”

He hit the wireless keyboard again and leaned over to look at the screen. Reflected in his glasses I saw a photo: Biblical Benny, aka Benzedrine Benny, aka a lot of other Bennys.

“This Benny character will be back on the streets in a couple of hours. He called his parents and they called Thomas Mesereau—you know, the guy who defended Michael Jackson? Mr. Mesereau is talking about filing against the city, citing harassment, false arrest…theft.”

“Theft?”

“You took his cell phone,” Barton said mildly.

“So that he could not communicate with the woman I was going to see…I gave it back to him when we picked him up this morning.”

“Which brings me to his alibi for the time of the murder.” Barton read in silence for a moment, then looked up at me. “He claims he was being interviewed by you at the time that Eva Casale was being killed.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but the Captain held up his hand. He had a Darth Vader Band-Aid on the tip of his little finger. “I’m not going to be able to keep him in custody much longer. I can throw a few misdemeanors at him: trading without a license, vagrancy—”

“Littering,” I suggested, “tax evasion…”

The Captain took me seriously and dutifully made a note of my suggestions; then he pushed the keyboard back under the desk and folded his hands together, interlacing his fingers. “But once the press finds out we’ve released him and we’re without a suspect in custody…”

He didn’t have to finish what he was saying. I was basically up shit creek without a paddle—in a canoe with a hole in the bottom.

“Talk to me about Ovsanna Moore and the girlfriend. Where do they fit into all this? How are they involved?”

“Well, there’s no motive for any of the killings, and no opportunity as far as I can see. They’ve got alibis for two of the three previous murders and claim they have an alibi for last night, which I haven’t had time to check. Ovsanna Moore just admitted she thinks the killings may be related to a blackmail threat she’s been receiving over the past number of months.”

The Captain straightened in his Aeron chair. “Did she report it?”

I shook my head. “I asked her; she said she hadn’t because she didn’t think we’d be able to do anything about it. It was too vague a threat, she said.”

“Maybe there is no threat?” He noticed me looking at Darth Vader and pulled the Band-Aid off his pinkie, tossing it in the waste-basket under his desk.

“She says she has investors lined up willing to put something like fifty million into Anticipation. She was afraid that if news of the blackmail attempt got out, she’d lose the investment.” The more I repeated Ovsanna’s words, the less I was buying them. I was starting to think she’d been playing me.

“So what was the threat—‘sell us the company or we kill people’?”

“Not quite…more like ‘sell us a portion of the company or we kill people.’” The Captain sucked on the cut on his little finger and stared at me. I nodded. “It’s thin, I know.”